MINORISA

This album holds a very special place in my heart as representing the first concert I remember attending in my life. My father was member of a small social club in our neighbourhood in Barcelona where social events and parties were organised. One evening Fusioon played there and my father took us all brothers and sisters, I must have been 9 years old, 10 at most (born in '66 and this album is from '75) . Honestly I don't remember much of the concert except that I was fascinated by the drummer, but I do remember that at the exit we were given a poster featuring the cover of this album, I remember it as being huge although probably it was not. The poster hang on the wall of our room for quite some years sharing space with the big bands of the period, ELP, Yes, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Purple etc (I shared room with my older brother and it was completely covered with posters, the 4 walls and ceiling). Funnily we did not own the album at home and it was only some years later that I bought it precisely to recover some memories of that first concert experience.

Sentimental aspects aside, this is one of those lovely examples of genuine experimental jazz-rock-based prog which one thinks could only happen in the early '70s. Fusioon was influenced by bands like Egg, The Nice and King Crimson and featured some of the most highly regarded musicians of the '70s spanish jazz-rock-prog scene, most notably drummer Santi Arisa and keyboardist Manel Camp. The music is basically instrumental regardless of a few weird vocal fragments in the first track.

The first 2 tracks, accounting for nearly 80% of the album, are really outstanding. The opener Ebusus (the roman name for the island of Ibiza) is a delightful display of originality, mostly jazz-rock based prog featuring some catalan folklore traditional melodies, basically instrumental except for 2 sections, the first one repeating a sentence in catalan which translates as "from the year 1930 we will keep a good memory, let's hope that for many years we can happily recall it" (I'm not sure what does the sentence refer to but it's likely to be the end of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera which would eventually lead to the autonomous government of Catalunya in 1931). Later on they recite all the different names that the island has had during history. Great stuff with special mention to the outstanding drumming and keys.

The 2nd track Minorisa Suite (Minorisa was the roman name of their hometown Manresa) is also amazing, built up from 3 traditional catalan folklore melodies, arranged in jazz-rock- prog fashion, and although I'm not very fond of folklorical music the result in this case is great, lovely stuff.

The low of the album comes with the last track which is excessively experimental, especially the 2nd movement, it's just the guys playing with their synthesizers oscillators, may have been fun listening to it completely stoned in its day, but not my piece of cake right now, similar as to what happens with Egg's album The Polite Force. Fortunately it's only 8 minutes out of the total 38 so I won't drop the total rating too much because of it.

A lovely album, highly recommended to those who want to dig deeper in the origins of genuine, unadulterated, original, creative, I would even say "innocent", early 70's jazz-rock- based prog.