ALTURAS DE MACHU PICCHU

I had always beem wary of South American prog because of the clichés of latino music (carribana - salsa - calipso - mambo etc..) and the fact is that this latino stuff irks me after a few minutes (I think they all sound alike and are extremely commercial but I also admit being almost prophane because of my general ignorance of those musics). Back in 81, I had however done my end-of-secondary-school escapade in S. America starting out in Venezuela and finishing in Chile - the original goal was to go to Tierra Del Fuego but we smoked too much what had to be smoked and chewed what had to be chewed , so we did not keep pace and never managed the last two thousand Kms. Certainly we payed no attention to the music other than the Andean Indian Folklore that we dearly loved and the cassettes in our 4WD. We had no idea that such a band was releasing an album that very year we were there(although they were fleeing the Pinochet regime and were recording from France, I gather) that represent one of the aspects of prog I was waiting for: Folk-prog from the Andes.

This album starts out great with Andean pipes and other flutes and soon we jump in the "pièce de résistance" Poderosa Muerte which is stupendous - read the other reviews. However the waryness I had was confirmed on the third and fifth or sixth number as the Latino rythm and music take over in what I will classify under Mariachi music for lack of better knowledge (I know Mexico is far away from Macchu Picchu , but as I said above, I fully admit to not knowing the intrinsicaties of those styles). The other numbers are much more in the line of the great second number. I only have one tiny critic on thiose two songs is that on one of them they obviously ripped off Hackett with a Latimer sound. The final small numbers echoes off the debut of the album.

This was my first album from that continent (Rael and Cinema Show being clones of you- know-who don't count, and I quickly got rid of them) and this album pleased me enough to want to persue my research. I discovered afterwise that my library has a few albums including this one! I would like to thank YOU , ProgReviewers on this site and Gnosis for helping me guide my research to a good start . Should we call this Mariachi Prog? :-) (Please avoid hitting me below the belt and above the shoulders)

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