10.000 ANOS DEPOIS ENTRE VÉNUS E MARTE

For those not yet in the know Jose Cid was Portugal's grand godfather of pop...and folk, and rock, and, for a brief while during the mid-to-late 1970's, progressive rock. His overall contribution to the genre was limited, yet that didn't stop him from producing one of the genre's cult items in the form of this quaint yet much-loved slice of synthesized space-rock. A concept album, '10,000 Anos Depois Entre Venus E Marte' arrived pretty late to the prog-rock party - 1978 no less - yet still managed to rack up impress sales figures in both Cid's homeland and throughout Spain and, to some degree, across mainland Europe. Non-Portugese speakers, of course, will have difficulty deciphering the album's story, yet thanks to some startlingly inventive music, it doesn't really matter. This is an album chock full of dreamy mellotron runs, ethereal acoustic moments, Cid's yearning vocals and neon-kissed guitar solos, whilst also featuring a truly cosmic atmosphere. It's a fairly short album, running at just over 38 minutes, yet when listened to from beginning to end it seems to stretch out for a lot longer thanks to the many fluid instrumental passages that bring to mind elements of 'Meddle'-era Floyd, touches of Klaus Schulze-style synthadelia and Cid's own folk background. Maybe occasionally '10,000 Anos...' delves into slightly poppy territory, and if the whole affair may well sound a tad dated to some ears the album does, for the most, prove pretty captivating listening. Opening piece 'O Ultimo Dia Na Tera' sets the standard, as pulses of gleaming keyboards and shimmering guitars swirl into a grand cosmic mesh, though the real highlights prove to be both the excellent 'Fuga Para O Espaco', which features a soaring guitar solo as its centre-piece and the self-explanatory 'Mellotron O Planeta Fantastico', which pins dense mellotron washes over yet more impressive guitar work and is, funnily enough, pretty fantastico. The fact that Cid would take such a stylistic detour to produce this lushly epic work - he would revert back to producing simpler pop product soon after - speaks volumes about this highly revered Iberian musician, both in terms of his musical ambition and his technical ability. The real joker in the Jose Cid career pack, '10,000 Anos...' proves a dreamy psychedelic opus, mixing prog-rock flourishes and space- rock atmospherics into an science-fiction fused whole that should delight all true prog-rock fans. Surely one of the great European albums of the 1970s, this is heady and highly enjoyable stuff indeed. STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2012