ANDALUZA

If you, like me, always wanted to hear traditional flamenco music played with a modern band, this is the record to have! Andaluza is an all instrumental album that does justice to the true flamenco style. That means: basic spanish guitar runs with bass, drums and piano addings, plus some overddubed electric guitars thrown in for good measure. The arrangements enhance the natural richness of the style, that has some jazzy overtones and often strong middle eastern influences peeping in.

The CD is not perfect, though, since the string arrangements are just too tacky for my taste. Fortunatly they don´t appear too much, just a couple of tracks. A string synthesizer or a mellotron would have done wonders in this kind of music (plus giving it a more progressive edge), but I´m just wondering. Even if the record is quite short (only 30 minutes in total), the high quality of the music stands and it is more interesting than most of the spanish bands I´ve known so far that claims to mix flamenco with rock.

Although I still think Juan Martin´s Picassos Portraits as the most interesting Flamenco/progressive rock fusion, Andaluza is an excellent efford. My final rating is something between 3,5 to 4 stars.