SINTESIS [AKA: EN BUSCA DE UNA NUEVA FLOR]

I was so glad to find this on Prog Archives - I was looking in the G's for it - as in Gruppo Sintesis but found it here and with a different cover to mine. My copy is part of the La Nueva Trove Cubana Coleccion of CUBAN Progressive rock. So what is it like - this was my first taste of South American prog - I later got into Iconoclasta and Espiritu - but Sintesis are still my favourites. As witht he East European records the S. American pressings suffer from a distinct lack of audio quality but the music makes up for it. this is a beautiful melange of progressive and folk musics, pulled together by the scintilatting female vocals and mutliple male/female harmonies. Often sounding like a Latin version of Trees or Mellow Candle this is prog-folk at its finest. A nice warm atmosphere - lots of acoustics and piano and quite ancient sounding moog synths which never sound out of place. The cover lists the major prog names as influences: ELP, Tull, Floyd, yes and er.....Cat Stevens!!! It makes sense however as a folky vibe does dominate on most tracks but there is some dextrous instrumental playing also from the band. Opener "Nueve ejemplares" is a fine piece of prog, all acoustic arpegios and moog coursing thru the melodies: sublime - the LP is also quite diverse containing some shorter song-based material like a femal CSN&Y singing in Spanish like on "Ven a encontrarnos" and Poema - wiht some spoken word-ish vocalisations. This is a great Sunday morning Lp - know what I mean - a smooth start to that most proggy of days - i.e are day off!! Mellow, folk-prog - femal vocal led - shiny, sun- kissed harmones and phat moogs, and warm organs, that fizz away. ACE!!!