THERE'S NO WAY OUT

After the first minute of the first listening I was alread oriented to the four stars. The symphonic keyboards with no percussions are very close to my tastes and also the acoustic guitar, if just a bit less "acoustic" could remind to Andy Latimer. When the singers enter it goes close to prog-folk. Imagine Heather Findlay singing here.

Rodrigo San Martin, from somewhere in Argentina is a multi-instrumentist. The only thing that he doesn't play is his voice, for this reason the arrangements so cured in detail and the good level of the composition is amazing. I think he's a bit weaker in drumming, probably using a human instead of a machine at the drums could bring getter results. He's an excellent keyboardist, instead and absolutely not bad at guitars, too.

The first of the 3 tracks of his album: 4378th Day, is quite an epic. Its defect is a little lack of continuity, but we have forgiven Marillion's Grendel for more than this. Each single part is very good, but they lack of "connection". As counterpart the sung parts are between Mostly Autumn and Renaissance. The two singers are good enough even if far from Haslam/Dunford.

From the symphonic opener to the funky-fusion that opens "No". Just few seconds and we have a sort of Ian Anderson converted to hard rock. The chorus is quite pop, so we have three genres in the same song. Arjen Lucassen should like this track. Very nice synth-guitar solo.

"War, Act 2" opens like Black Sabbath, then when the distorted guitar goes somewhere else, the acoustic that replaces it seems coming from King Crimson. This is only the intro of this long epic. It starts effectively after two minutes, when keyboards and voice are still Crimsonian even with a touch of blues enhanced by the acoustic guitar. This sound reminds me to a great newage guitarist, Phil Sheeran or sometimes to the bluesman "Snowy White" but the melody has the little dissonances that are characteristic of this kind of music. I think also to bands like "Akt", but less experimental.

So an excellent album. I keep the first impression.