A.L.F. - Undiscovered Brazilian Treasure.

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Brazil is famous for several things: great football, gorgeous women, amazing carnivals, The Amazon (not the one you get your CDs from, of course, but the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world)...and some pretty fine music. There have been a few threads on here regarding Brazilian prog bands over the last couple of years - this one from last year: 
http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=68287, another from 2009: 
http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=55149, and there is also an extensive list you can view of artists from the country who are already on here: http://www.progarchives.com/Bands-country.asp?country=108.
Some bands are quite well known and appreciated (for example Os Mutantes & Bacamarte), and deservedly so too - others far less so, an example being Arion, who despite being together for almost 10 years, and opening for the great Dutch masters Focus when they toured the country in 2002, only ever released one self-titled (and extremely good) album in 2001. 

Now imagine that you could take all the elements that made Yes such a great band back in the early seventies, and fuse them with some of the more recent subtleties of 21st century prog? Well, a band called A.L.F. (an abreviation of Alien Life Form, not Animal Liberation Front!) did just that in 2004 with an album they released called "Lonelyness Is Mirror" (yes, that's how it was spelt on the album cover!).

The band was created by Renato Jardim, the former lead singer of another Yes-inspired Brazilian band called Grandbell (who ARE on here, and released just one excellent album in 1996 called "The Sun And The Embryo"), and drummer Daniel Fontoura after the pair reputedly met up at a Transatlantic Concert in 2001. They were basically a four-piece band, but used several guest musicians to fill out their sound during the recording of the album.

Personnel:
Renato Jardim - vocals and 12-string guitar
Marcelo Playker - guitar
Guilherme Aguiar - bass, backing vocals
Daniel Fontoura - drums
Guest musicians: Malcoln Robert - keyboards, Henrique Wilasco - guitar, Felipe Karan - violin, and Fernando Petri - keyboards

The album itself consists of five quite lengthy tracks, the first being a 24-minute epic (in 6 parts), and the last one also stretching beyond the 10 minute mark.

"Lonelyness is Mirror" (2004) Tracklist:
01 - Endless Goodbye (24:14)
       Aslang Chronos
       Scaling the Wall
       Air Dance
       A Bath in the Lake of Fire
       Healing the Stoned Heart
       Back to the Wall
02 - By The River (6:48)
03 - Mystery Ride (6:15)
04 - What My Story Would Tell (7:01)
05 - Loneliness is Mirror (10:27)

The first track is almost an album in itself, and the whole album features some majestic musicianship, superb songwritng, and an excellent vocal performance from Renato, who at times you could almost swear was Jon Anderson, albeit at a slightly lower pitch. Make no mistake, this is a fine album, and how it has remained such an unknown gem for 7 whole years is a total mystery.

Proggnosis have a review of it on their site (M.J. Brady, Feb 2006): http://www.proggnosis.com/PGRelease.asp?RID=18444, where the album is compared to Hamadryad's first CD - "Conservation of Mass". On that site they state the resident bass/keyboard player as being Fernando Ptrio, but to the best of my knowledge he was only a guest musician (playing keyboards, even though bass is his main instrument) & his real name is Petri (Ptrio being a nickname he was given after he formed a 3-piece instrumental group in Porto Alegre in 1997). The review even goes as far as suggesting that the CD is in many ways is better than a lot of Yes's own discography, and I for one would certainly tend not to argue with that as far as their later offerings are concerned. 

OK enough of the crap - let's listen to some music!

Sadly, the only YouTube video I can find, which features just a brief clip of them (about 3 minutes of "Endless Goodbye"), is one called "Progressive Metal Masterpieces 11 - Prog Rock Edition" (which contains no prog metal whatsoever, but that's another story...) There are four very decent pieces of music on it, so by all means have a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuuJC56RoN4, but I'm not going to bother embedding it here.

For samples we actually have to go to a Brazilian website: http://som13.com.br/#/alf which gives samples of each of the five tracks, lasting a little over 6 minutes each. When the page loads, click on the little arrow to the left of the green + symbol next to each of the tracks listed under the heading "A.L.F ouvir músicas mais escutadas" (about half way down the page) and they'll open up in the player and remain there as a playlist as more are tracks added and listened to.

(Edit: another site that streams the same content, but autoplays it on my computer once the page has loaded is this one: http://palcomp3.com/alf/)

We also have drummer Daniel Fontoura's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/danifontoura/music, where he has kindly provided full versions of "Loneliness is Mirror" and " By The River" for us to enjoy. However, your experience of this great band will not be complete until you have heard the opening track "Endless Goodbye" in its entirety. So far I haven't found it streaming in full anywhere on the web, but I will keep looking. 

In the meantime enjoy what we have so far, I really feel that this band were crazy to quit after just one album - with a bit more refinement in the production department I reckon they had the potential to have become massive. Unfortunately I suppose Brazilian bands just aren't fashionable outside of that country, despite their undeniable talent and creativity, so just like Arion and Grandbell before them they became a sadly neglected 'one-album wonder'.

And that, it must be said, is a tragedy. 

Edit: For what it's worth, I forgot to include the fact that "Loneliness Is Mirror" was voted third best album of 2004 by a National band in Progressive Rock Brazil's music poll for that year, with a vote tally of 20% - and  A.L.F. themselves were voted second best National band, with a score of 60%!! http://www.rockprogressivo.com.br/pesquisas/2004.htm  

Edited by yam yam - October 11 2011 at 16:26