PICASSO PORTRAITS

This album, in my view, excelled because it is a flawless incorporation of the flamenco style to a progressive shell. Frequent rhythm changes, brought from prog experimentation, allowed for a journey through traditional spanish sounds, which impacted me with a renewed appreciation for the castanets and specially the acoustic guitar, and which expanded my comprehension of flamenco. Sounds like "girls of algiers" helped me to feel spanish moorish roots, all the while "the picador" gave me the opportunity to feel inovation, from a genre i would not expect previously. In summary, if listenning to something refreshingly new is you objective, I would give this masterpiece a try. My only complaints being it's recording (at least the version i found online), whose mixing could be sligthly improved with more spatiality and definiton, but this is never in the way of enjoying it. To conclude this review, i would like to defend that this is, in fact an essential disc. Well, besides its never tedious sound, i say it deserves the 5th star for it remembers us that progressive rock is concomitantly rooted in tradition and transformation, drinking from diferent sources in order to create something artisticaly new. In this logic "picasso portraits"- a masterpiece inspired by paintings, made by blending old genres with our beloved prog- is a rare rememberance of prog's essence, thus being essential.