Antares / Symphonic

During the early 80s a highly active but rather small progressive rock scene emerged in Caracas, Venezuela headed by such bands as Tempano, Aditus, Vytas Brenner, Ficción, etc. Reaching the mid 80s most of these bands disbanded or became pop groups and a minority left some progressive albums. One of those bands was Antares, which disbanded without a release as a result of the label wanting them to produce more accessible music.

Antares was formed by students of the Simon Bolivar University (my university!!!) Juan Carlos Ballesta (drums, percussions), Juan Carlos Boddington (guitar), Nicolás Hernández (vocals, bass), Alex Sartini (guitar) and Roberto Rigobon (keyboards, accordion). They started to write music influenced (according to them) by Genesis, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Van der Graaf Generator, Eloy, ELP and Grobschnitt. They debuted playing their first gig at the university, which allowed them to use its studio to record four of their songs: "Cantata a un Mundo que se Extingue", "Arenas de Gobi", "Vida y Muerte de un Pastel" and "Mundo de Papel", the last one getting some airplay. In 1982 "Arenas de Gobi" was renamed "Genio de la Lámpara" and released as a part of a compilation album called Venerock + they got lots of TV appearances, after which Antares disbanded.

Two decades after the separation of the band some videos of their TV performances started to appear throughout the internet and Nicolas Hernandez (Vocals, Bass) remastered all of their old unreleased recordings and published them on the internet for free.

The band's compositions are nice and pleasant symphonic rock but nothing really outstanding, nevertheless they were an important and influential part of the Venezuelan prog scene (+ apparently they have some sentimental value to Venezuelan prog fans that lived that era....)).

Something interesting about the Venezuelan prog scene of the 80s is the incredible amount of prog festivals and Antares was part of many of them

The entire album is here for free (for download and/or streaming): http://ishare.sphorium.com/fb/link.aspx?id=51bef01b-421b-4818-8b98-8fe7ce64553b

some of the videos (this is some of their popier material-but still prog-...listen to the album for the 10+ min epics, and more progressive stuff):











I am available for bios

There are some tracks missing, do you know what's happening ?

Marty McFly wrote: There are some tracks missing, do you know what's happening ?

There is a second page with tracks 13, 8, 9 and 10...

there are some numbers (page numbers) next to an arrow at the bottom right corner

Now quick checking before work ... 

Smooth keyboard-based symphonic sounds with lyrical Spanish (maybe ... ) , like Genesis (much influencial on them?) ... very amazing, indeed.

DamoXt7942 wrote: Now quick checking before work ... Smooth keyboard-based symphonic sounds with lyrical Spanish (maybe ... ) , like Genesis (much influencial on them?) ... very amazing, indeed.

influences according to the band: Genesis, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Van der Graaf Generator, Eloy, ELP and Grobschnitt...

really nice band, there is no question about that!

fun fact: the keyboardist is now a MIT professor on economics.....