HAIKARA

If you must own only one Finnish prog album of the 70's , make it this one , and to a lesser extent the Geafar. If you had loved the absolutely crazy band Hoyry Kone in the late 90's , no doubt they were heavily infuenced by Haikara. What sets this album apart from the rest of them are the outstanding arrangements : what a writing job. The album starts with the slightly weaker (IMHO) Beggings of a Poor Boy, but this is very minor because the rest of the tracks are top notch. I cannot really describe you the music by citing other bands becuse none come to mind directly. The wind player is obviously one of the main component of this group but everyone gets a chance to be brilliant on this album. I know Greg Walker still has it on his catalogue but hurry up.