CROSSING THE LINE

Take Camel's sound, then reburbish it with a harsh attitude in the guitar riffs and solos, and while you're at it, enrich its melodic sensibility with Asian flavours (mostly on flute), and don't forget to add an eerie ambience a-la Pulsar and a great amount of incredibly tight drumming: the result of this set of operations is the debut album by Asia Minor, a solid symphonic ensemble formed by Turksih musicians resident in France. Though I must admit that I prefer their following album, it's also fair to state that 'Crossing the Line' is a real classic of late 70s prog. Tracks 1, 2 and 4 are the ones I consider the most representative of the musical virtues I've pointed out in the first paragraph (specially 'Misfortune', an awesome lesson of how to manage contrasts cleverly with explosive energy), but it's also relevant to mention that the guys of Asia Minor can be soft and subtle, as in the evocative 'Landscape' (such a pity that it's not longer...). I wish I could give it a 4 1/2 star rating (I'm saving the perfect rating for their second offering 'Between Flesh and Divine'), but anyway, suffice it to reiterate that this is one of the best prog recordings to come out of France (or anywhere else, for that matter) in a time when the genre was starting to face a serious decline in terms of commercial attention and artistic relevance.