QUARTETO 1111

Quarteto 1111 is the first album of the band of the same name, it's a important album to the Portuguese progressive rock scene, being one first representative of the genre of the country. Is a culturally relevant album too once was released during the Portuguese dictatorship, causing the album to be censored.

The reason of the censorship is that of the strong critic aspect of the lyrics, covering a certain range of themes, mainly the structural racism of the society and reflections on emigration.

The music is basically symphonic progressive with elements of psychedelic rock, one of the major influences of the group is the beatles (who they gonna create a song in homage later in theirs careers), this influence are felt especially in the song "Uma estrada para minha aldeia", that really looks like something out of Sgt Peppers.

Other potent influence of the group is the Portuguese folk, mainly the "fado", some type of Portuguese compositions based on slow, harmonic and emotional vocals accompanied by acoustic guitars, something kinda bardic.

The number of influences of the group is large, but this album is nothing really impressive in innovation, it's necessary to considerate the local scene on making this claim but comparing this record to the rest of the world at that moment there is nothing much innovative or experimental here. Is easy to create counterparts of the songs and other creations around the world, this lack of innovation in a record whose intention in clearly progressive bothers me a little but doesn't ruin the experience.

Overall, the music here is good, but not exceptional, if you like early progressive bands and want to get more deep into countries whose language are not English I recommend listening to this album once was essential to the creation of a Portuguese progressive rock scene. I pondered give to this album 2 stars but I cannot deny his cultural relevance, making his historical importance a factor to a prog rock fan listen to him. 3 stars