BAśNIE

The debut album from neo prog band Collage is from 1990. Basnie is sung in polish and it will probably scare some potential listeners away. Give it a chance though if you like the later albums from Collage as the music is very similar to those.

The musicians are not the same as on later releases and the most notable change from later albums is singer Tomek Rozycki who sounds a bit different from Robert Amirian who sang on later Collage albums. Guitarist Mirek Gil and drummer Wojtek Szadkowski are the only recognizable names if you know later Collage albums. In my opinion Mirek Gil is one of the best neo prog guitarists and his style is already pretty well deleloped on Basnie. The level of musicianship is good even though I don´t find the vocals from singer Tomek Rozycki very inspiring. Maybe it would have helped if I understood what he sings.

The music is clearly inspired by early neo prog bands like Marillion and IQ. The keyboard and the very lead based guitar plays a big role in the music, while the vocal melodies aren´t that exciting.

The sound quality isn´t too good in my opinion. I don´t think it is very exciting, it misses the rich and full sound of later albums.

So even though Basnie should have some interest from the fans of Collage I don´t think it has much relevance to prog rock in general and therefore I will only recommend this to the fans of Collage, and maybe the curious neo prog head. As Basnie is mostly for the fans I will give it 2 stars.