SHIVANANDA

A swiss obscurity from mid to late '70 named Shivananda with only 2 albums in their pockets , first from 1977 and second from 1979, they disbanded around 1983 remaining totaly unknown. The name of the game here is jazz fusion with progressive touches, quite ok most of the time, I like this kind of jazz fusion, the instruments working all the time and has a light overall sound. The second release from 1979 named Headlines issued at Gnome records with an intresting artwork definetly pleases me from start to finish. The guitar has an important role here, with nice catchy parts, nice grooves and good melodic passages. Some sax is present here aswell, pieces like Shiva's Smiling or Little big men are winners to me, Carlo Milan the guitar player and Kurt Baebi the keybordist made a good job. All in all more then decent, not fantastic but good, maybe similar at some point with dutch band Spin or german jazz fusion bands from that period. 3.5 stars