HAIZEA

Haizea were a Basque folk quintet who produced two studio albums in their brief career. This one, the first, is the more placid of the two, all acoustic and with one male and one female vocalist who take turns singing rather than act as a duet.

This is pleasant enough folk music, although it isn’t really Basque and it isn’t actually very progressive. The songs have a sort of non-descript traditional folk feel to them, with the Basque influences detectably pretty much only in the vocals.

Except for the lengthy and closing “Arrosa Xuriaren Azpian” these are all rather short tracks of four or five minutes and are quite similar. The music consists mostly of a couple acoustic guitars (one picking and one strumming usually), a delicate oboe with contrabass setting the rhythm, and the two vocalists. There’s some flute but not as much as one would typically expect from Latin folk music, and occasional uncredited bits of percussion (again, not as much as is typically found in Latin music).

A couple tracks (“Loa Loa” and “Oreina Bila”) are almost all acoustic noodling with lullaby-like vocals, and “Goizeko Euri Artean” sounds like a Basque version of a John Denver tune.

The closing track and “Ura Ixuririk” introduce just a hint of psych guitar which would figure more prominently on the band’s second and final album, but that sound is only hinted at here.

There’s really not much else to say about this album, other than it has an agreeable enough sound, but probably won’t do much to appeal to most progressive music fans. Two stars for fans, but that’s about it.

peace