RENASCENÇA

Brazilian act Wejah begun life in 1982 as a Hard Rock band under the forces of Eduardo Miranda (guitar), Nelson Sanchez (voice), Jorge Moana (bass), and Vladimir Augusto (drums).By mid-80's the band had already changed a couple of names (Ultima Geracao, Renascenca), while Sanchez left the band to be replaced by Alessandro Miranda on keyboards and Henrique Rosa on sax/vocals.They managed to build a good fame in the Sao Paulo underground music scene and in 1988 they entered the studio as Wejah with the help of Amir Cantúsio Jr. (aka Alpha III) to record their debut for Cantusio's Faunus Records.It was eventually released on vinyl under the title ''Renascenca'' in 1988.

The album suffers from a bad mix and production, however the musicianship sounds quite decent, being a weird mix of Psychedelic/Progressive Rock with a touch of Electronic.The first couple of tracks are rather hypnotic Psych/Electronic pieces with mediocre vocals but a good use of electronics and organ, while the guitar sounds very flat.The first long track ''Eventualidades'' follows the same vein, opening with nice keyboard work, the guitar playing is smooth and almost HACKETT-like in places, there is a great spacey synth-led middle part in the vein of ALPHA III before the fine ending guitar solo and the warm choirs.The eponymous track will close the first side of the LP in a dramatic way with strong synthesizers, a spacey atmosphere and crying guitar hooks but mediocre vocals.The 12- min. ''Canone'' is more of the same.Partly guitar-driven and partly synth-based, this composition is build around electronic sequences, spacey synthesizers, one-dimensional long grooves, guitar explosions, boring sax soloing and rather bad vocals with the band once more showing some nice ideas totally incohesive to each other.''Poeta Terrestre, Poeta Divino'' will open with some percussion work to transmit into a keyboard/guitar-based groove with an elegant atmosphere, but the production, vocals and cheap-sounding synths do not help at all.

Unfortunately ''Renascenca'' suffers from series of black holes.The mediocre production, bad mix, below average vocals and flat synthesizers make it sounding like an amateur effort recorded at a basement than an album headed for the markets.However there are some interesting ideas the band delivers, from the good combination of guitar and electronics to some unique atmospheres their sound creates, that makes the album pretty listenable and saves it from being a totally forgotten obscurity...2.5 stars.