DÍAS DE LUNA

A late-70's entry in the Spanish Prog scene, actually somekind of an Azahar offshoot band, featuring Gustavo Ros on keyboards and Uruguayan Jorge Barral on bass.The original line-up included also Daniel Henestrosa on guitar/vocals and Ricardo Valle on drums, their debut ''Diad de luna'' was recorded at the Estudios Sonoland in Coslada with the help of Juan Carlos on strings and flute and was launched in 1979 on Movieplay.

Azabache sound like any other Spanish Prog band of the period, they made strong use of synthesizers and had a special Latin touch on vocals and melodies, they constructed their music with a well-hidden love for Classical Music and semi-symphonic orchestrations, but they existed during the wrong time, because the era did not allow many deep and trully progressive experimentations.The generator of their birth AZAHAR and early MEDINA AZAHARA have strong links to the music of Azabache, which twisted around neurotic synthesizers, sweet piano lines and pretty sharp guitars with sentimental vocals all over the place.Their compositions were pretty good, having an efficient balance between laid-back orchestrations and more emphatic instrumentals with the vocals playing a huge role, but the frequently cheesy-sounding keyboards suck much of the album's pleasure.Additionally they had a fair dose of commercial tunes popping up here and there, either being a chorus or a rockin' theme full of cheap keyboard showering.Fortunately they kept a nice profile throughout the work and most of the tracks sound like split in several mini variations, the band avoids to keep the same tempo for over one minute long and the result was a set of decent pieces with specific moments of instrumental majesty.They were pretty unlucky to operate at the dawn of the 80's, because a different instrumental selection would have made this sound a lot better.

They released one more album in 1980 before disbanding , ''No, gracias'', here Valle was replaced by Hermes Calabria plus singer and flutist Miguel Torres was added to the line-up, this one is said to be even more commercial.Later on Jorge Barral played with Labanda, Calabria became the drummer of the Heavy Metal act Baron Rojo and Gustavo Ros performed with Jan.

A bit cheesy Spanish Prog from the dark years.Some great and fiery instrumentation throughout with a few dramatic interplays, but parts of the vocal delivery and synths are quite mediocre.I found the good stuff though to be more satisfying, so this is considered as recommended.