Best Symphonic Prog album for 30 years - Abel Ganz

FIRST REVIEW OF THIS ALBUM

At about 24 years after their debut album Gratuitous Flash (1984) and 14 years after their latest studio-album The Deafening Silence (1994), Scottish formation Abel Ganz has released a comeback CD entitled Shooting Albatross.

Since Abel Ganz started to make music in the Eighties their sound is considered as neo-prog (like contemporaries Marillion, IQ and Pendragon) but on this new album my musical impression is that the sound is a blend of Seventies inspired symphonic rock and folk music. The four long compositions (between 12 and 24 minutes) contain lots of shifting moods and a lush instrumentation like the use of the Indian sitar (electric version in Sheepish) and the Greek bouzouki (in Sheepish en Ventura). I enjoyed the contrast between the folky interludes featuring 12-string acoustic guitars, whistles, banjo, mandolin and flute (beautifully blended with instruments like the harpsichord, Mellotron or classical guitar) and the symphonic rock parts with electric guitar (fiery, wah-wah drenched in So Far and a strongly build-up, sensitive solo in Ventura) and vintage keyboards like the Fender Rhodes elektric piano, the Hammond organ, the Minimoog synthesizer and the unsurpassed Mellotron, I didn’t know that Abel Ganz was able to make such a captivating progrock! The vocals are handled by several singers, including Alan Reed (in the long track So Far), of Pallas fame but once he joined Abel Ganz.

I hope this new Abel Ganz album will got the attention it deserves, for me it was almost a musical revalation! My rating: 3,5 stars.