ASTRID PRÖLL

Astrid Pröll is a new band from Puerto Rico that play music they like and enjoy without caring much for airplay or being famous like many other puertorican artists. With their debut released in August, it caused alot of stir in the underground puertorican music scene with alot of praising and positive reviews from everyone all over the lil' island.

If I can sum all of Astrid Pröll's sound in one word it would be eclectic . All of the members of the band have been in the underground music scene for about 10 years. So they carry all of those influences and mix them with their own hard sound. Their influences range from Krautrock, RIO, Post-rock, Canterbury a pinch of Space rock and their main influence, King Crimson (Lark's era). In every song you'll find something new and different than the previous song and they still manage to sound organised and coherent. Every song flow nicely into the next one so in the end you'll find a well crafted album and you can see all the hard work and effort they've putted into it. And let's not forget every single member played their respective instruments very well (no slouch here) and no one shows off. They all work as a team and it works.

It's hard to make a review of this album and not go song by song explaining it since every song has a different story to tell, but I'll try to keep it at a minimum. The first song shows their krautrock and space rock influences with some atmospheric sounds until it later explodes into some hard prog to keep the blood pomping. The second track , Catastrofe, keeps that high energy sound with some King Crimson and Guapo influences through the whole song. Other songs like Disidente and Torso follow the same path as Catastrofe, but never sounding the same and always being dinamic and energetic. Orígenes de movimiento is an Ambient song that Cluster or Neu could've done and the next track, Resistencia, is a perfectly made Post-rock song. Very emotional and moving (one of my favorite songs from the album. Go figure). 88MHz is the best track in the album IMO. A 14 minute epic that's divided into three parts in wich the middle shows their RIO influences with a repetetive guitar riff, drums flying everywhere, people whispering in the background and sax sounding like they where sirens. Total chaos! After that song you'll be left gasping for air with your mouth open as if you where being chased by hungry dogs around your neighborhood, but the album isn't over yet! There are still three songs left. One being one of two songs with vocals (the other being Perro Negro) wich are easy to listen to, the other being one of the energetic songs, Torso, (also the best one of the three hard prog songs) and the last one is the best song on the album after 88MHz. Laboratorio Grotowsky is sure to please the Canterbury and jazz fan and I couldn't think of a better way to end the album. It's a smooth going song with a Fender Rhodes (!), some nice alto sax playing to keep it cool and nice jazzy bass to make things even better. They sample some words that repeat through the whole song that say "No racism allowed" It feels almost as if you where being hipnotized in a good way.

To sum this up, if you like any of the bands or genres mentioned in this review then you owe it to yourself to get this album

4.5 Brilliant!