HUASCARAN

This symphonic jazz/rock album from Eastern Europe is a popular title amongst symphonic fans. The album excels in balancing different moods against one another, busy funky fusion sections with lots of synths alternate with gentle piano parts, sweeping guitar solos and even some pastoral vocal sections. The interplay between the members is of consistently high quality as no one takes the spotlight unnecessary or diverts the attention from the compositions.

The album is meant to tell a story and this clearly shows in the compositions, which move from scene to scene, almost like Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition". In structure at least, as the music lacks dramatic impact for me, there are section that rock out, but I'm not a fan of the mellow melodic style, nor of the sympho-funk style they use at times . The production could be better as well, the instruments don't always blend together well and it's too polished and synthetic for my taste. In other words, it's the typical Progrock sound of the second half of the 70s.

This is a good fusion album, and at the same time it's an adequate symphonic album. Fans of melodic fusion like RTF should apreciate this a lot. But looking at the Eastern European scene, I prefer SBB and Blue Effect.