GAMALON

Top three tunes would include the opener "Billy's Salon" which is catchy and uptempo with guitar over the bass and drums. The two guitarists trade off after 3 minutes, pretty cool. It settles as the drumming impresses after 4 minutes then it kicks back in. "Ooh...Babe" is a beautiful song with the laid back guitar soaring. Just gorgeous and the guitar will start to light it up before 3 minutes. I'm not as big a fan of "The King" or "Black Licorice" for the guitar style more than anything as they are quite jazzy here. "Cabin #14" is my other top three. Solid drumming and great sounding bass lines but I love that guitar playing over top. Heavy guitar around 1 1/2 minutes as they amp it up. The guitar is lighting it up before 4 minutes. Drums then become the focus for about a minute then the guitar returns. The closer is interesting as it's all the drummer yet it almost sounds electronic.

A pleasant surprise given the year it was released, the only other Jazz album I like from this year is David Torn's "Cloud About Mercury".

Standard US Jazz/Fusion with a clean, guitar-led sound is the offering of ''Aerial view'', which shows Gamalon at a fine form, creating music that can be both accesible and virtuosic with a nice sense of melody and a good amount of mascular guitar moves, always supported by a solid rhythm section.The music is all instrumental as expected with plenty of fiery rhythmic parts, impressive guitar solos and more laid-back deliveries with an emphasis on atmosphere than technique.With every style Gamalon proove to be among the leading acts of the Fusion scene at the time and their sound is often colored with surprising vibes, such as orchestral preludes, Heavy Rock pounds in the vein of RUSH, Ethnic orientation in ''Relapse'' or even some discreet funky lines in the bass work.The fact that the band could switch styles with comfort is amazing, even if the album has often a slightly annoying nuance, typical of the late-80's Fusion productions.

Confident, melodic and demanding Jazz/Fusion with a palette of different sounds.Fans of guitar-based Fusion will love this at first sight.Recommended.

Gamalon's last studio testament to jazz fusion/rock lovers was Hled to the light from 1996. This was their forth album and is a more then decent one in this field. I know this band for some years, I reviewed previous two albums Aerial view and High contrast and I was amazed of the excellent quality of the music offered byt his overlooked band. I personaly think that Aerial view is their best album and one of the better releases in this filed in last decades. Held to the light is a fairly decent release, in some parts the album doesn't have that energic arrangements of previous albums but still worth to be discovered. Bruce Brucato is one hell of a great guitarist, he really knew to make some spelendid acrobatics on guitar, aswell some intricate passages are present here that at least to me, is one of the most unknown jazz fusion guitarist ever, is so so underated musician. Overall, all pieces has same level, no one particulary is in front. Nice complicated druming, solid bass work, maybe if there was some more energy in some compostions, is to much laid back in comapartion with absolutly awesome Aerial view. 3.5 stars to me. Very unnoticed band, definetly one of the best exponets of jazz fusion/rock scene.

Gamalon proposed an energetic guitar-driven Prog/Fusion, which can be both atmospheric and virtuosic, always led by the twin guitar exercises of the Reinhardt/Puleo duo.With plenty of solos and dynamic changes, ''Gamalon'' is an album based on a typical 80's slick production and a solid bassist, somewhat like a cross between compatriots HELMET OF GNATS and Canadians UZEB, bordering often to the Power Rock sound of RUSH, always with a Fusion edge.The couple of tracks, that feature the presence of Tom Schuman, are propably the ones closer to Jazz/Jazz Rock due to his elegant jazzy piano lines.The rest of the album has evident funky references in the bass lines, which spoil a bit the image of the group, especially if combined with the production level, but the guitar exercises and multiple breaks of the album are the best proofs of a good and talented group, that performs music with passion and technical efficiency.The alternations between the rhythm and solo electric guitars offer some nice highlights, while the drumming of Gamalon's brain Ted Reinhardt sounds confident and at moments impressive.

Not a monumental release, but ''Gamalon'' is among the good album of the Jazz/Fusion field during the 80's, as the style was suffering from plenty of inconsistent and flat releases around the time.Recommended.

The great guitar solos of the other Gamalon albums are hard to find on this disc. Only Lift Off has any real spark, and that is before it settles into one of Watts' competent but bland sax solos. The rest of the album is completely forgattable, best only for background noise where you don't want the music to interfere with any conversation.

There are some high points. The guitar solos throughout are great. That alone would be a good reason to purchase this album. But the best song is You Still Have Time, which sounds remarkably like early Kansas, both in composition and performance. That effect is helped along by Kansas-like vocals, and Geoffrey Fitzhugh Perry's violin. Another nice song is Flyby which features some impressive chapman stick work by drummer Ted Reinhardt.

Like their other albums, this is not bad, but it could be much better.

Which isn't to say there is nothing to listen to here. Some of the pieces, by way of syncopation, manage to sound more complex than they actually are. And the last two songs, Aerial View and Relapse, manage to actuall use seven four and seven eight time signatures respectively.

So this isn't the best album by this band, but it's not too bad.