LAR DE MARAVILHAS

I've been unable to find information on this Brazilian prog band, but I can say that they seemed to have been influenced by early GENESIS, and YES. The music never gets too complex, and the songs range from excellent to poor ("What the hell were they thinking when they wrote this crap?"). I wouldn't call this a classic, but "Lar De Maravilhas" is a decent prog album.

Casa das Máquinas (house of machines) is an art-rock band (in my opinion). They recorded three Long plays. I think it is the best of Casa, I means, it's the most progressive. The best song is "Vale Verde". The last one, "O Sol/Reflexo Ativo" is very good music, but with very poor lyric. "Vou Morar No Ar" and " Lar De Maravilhas" is very good too. Other songs are a mix of progressive and rock and roll. Well, three stars: not the best, but very good album, with instrumental passages, beautiful melodies and good rock and roll!

This is their best effort! A truly prog gem! Great album! So beautiful!

Liberdade Espacial and Vale Verde are the best tracks, but all are wonderful. The Lyrics are a mix of non-sense, heavy drugs in the vein (lol) and some esoteric/spiritual. Of course you have to be familiar to the portuguese language, but if you are not don't worry... the instrumental is very good and worth the price!

I used to sleep listening to this album, it is a incredible journey! Very relaxing.

Art Rock/Symphonic Prog with some hard rock, space rock and pop/rock moments it's a resume of this brilliant album. The songs are not too complex, but are very very very creative! The feeling of rock and roll is very high, and the band put their heart on this!

Vocals, guitars, bass, drums and keyboards in perfect simetria!

Most of the tracks on this album feature an ear-pleasing combination of electric piano and moog, with the former giving a slightly celestial feeling and the latter inevitably marking this as a ‘heavy’ band. Which they are really, based on their other studio albums. This appears to be the most reserved studio work by the band, and even here there are a couple of tracks where the boys kick up their heels a bit.

I don’t actually know anyone who knows much about this Brazilian band, but their albums all seem to be available on CD, so they must have a fan base somewhere. There aren’t too many Portuguese-language symphonic bands in my collection, mostly because I don’t know the language and I’m one of those music fans who likes to know what someone is singing about.

But that’s not particularly important on this album since the themes are fairly obvious, and none of them are overly deep or complex.

Like the band’s debut, this album treads pretty wide territory, ranging from symphonic to light psych to heavy rock, and even to pop ala ELO or the Beatles (“Epidemia De Rock”).

Most of the tracks though are fairly heavy on keyboards, and like so many South American bands, most also feature copious amounts of plucked acoustic guitar. The one exception is also the best track on the album – “O Sol Reflexo Ativo” (er…, something about the Sun). This one opens with a lengthy piano and acoustic guitar intro that is accompanied by some spoken-word ramblings, presumably about the Sun given the title. After a quasi-psychedelic transition of the voice and keyboards using digital manipulation, the moog and electric guitar come in for three or four minutes of extended instrumental noodling that is actually quite engaging as it slowly builds to a rather frenzied pitch before an abrupt drum roll and crashing cymbal bring it all to a finish. Like the rest of the album, there is nothing new, innovative, or particularly complex here, but I get a distinct sense of upbeat energy being exhibited by the musicians, and I’ve managed to play this a half-dozen times or so and find new little nuances, particularly in the acoustic guitar and piano, that catch my attention and make me think these guys put an honest effort into this collection of tunes.

This isn’t a masterpiece by any means, but it is a pretty decent record, and recommended to those who enjoy acoustic guitar with their seventies keyboards, and very loose arrangements that are pretty much devoid of the typical blues or jazz stylings one could expect from this time period and geographic location. Three stars is reasonable.

peace

After their eponymous debut album, here's Brasilian five piece band Casa Das Maquinas their second effort. The sound is warm, alternating and in general rooted in the Seventies progressive rock tradition but with some surprising sidesteps. We can enjoy symphonic prog in the tracks Astralizacao (wonderful keyboards and Hackett-like gutiar work), Vale Verde (fluent rhythm and again beautiful keyboard play) and O Sol (moving Grand piano intro and a great grand finale with howling guitar and powerful organ). It's rock and roll time in Libertade Espacial (raw guitar and fat synthesizer sound) and Epidemia De Rock (strong organ solo and fiery guitar), mellow acoustic guitar play in Raios De Lua and lots of shifting moods and nice musical ideas (like flamenco guitar) in the titletrack, the absolute highlight of this pleasant and melodic CD.

A painfully underrated quintessential album of brazilian progressive rock (with hippie thematics)

At their second album, the band Casa das Máquinas dropped almost completely the hard rock (almost because the second to last song is a hard rock song) and went to explore the experimental and psychedelic side of music that was blossoming in the 70's (specially the mid 70's here in Brazil), probably influenced by Os Mutantes and O Terço. Besides Lar das Maravilhas being a good album, it never received all the attention it should, and that is probably because the brazilian prog giants released their albums in the same year (or almost in the same year) as Casa das Máquinas released Lar das Maravilhas: O Terço released Criaturas da Noite (their so called magnum opus), Os Mutantes released Tudo foi Feito pelo Sol and Terreno Baldio released their debut, also entitled Terreno Baldio.

In this album, as i said before, they went for a more experimental and psychedelic approach, concerning their music. However, at least here in Brazil, the psychedelic stuff had a big deal of hippie influence. That can be seen on almost all of Os Mutantes albums and in this whole album, except the song Epidemia de Rock.

About the songs, musicianship and other features there are some thing i would like to state:

Casa das Máquinas don't show us any sign of extraordinary musicianship in any part of the album. However, the songs don't require any kind of extraordinary musicianship because their most important feature is the feeling. In fact, i can see (or listen, i don't know) here many influences from prog giants like Supertramp, Yes, Os Mutantes (mainly lyric-wise) and Pink Floyd (mainly music-wise). Also, this band is only at PA because of this album and i don't understand why it is classified as prog-related since it has so many clear influences from the crossover and psychedelic prog.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Although i think this albums is unfairly underrated i must be fair and give it a fair grade, according with my feelings. I really wanted to give it the 5 stars grade, but it is simply not worthy. It hurts me to say, but this is a 4 stars album.

Casa Das Máquinas was always a weird affair for me. Being Brazilian we always got this as one of our Prog Bands, but in fact, most of the time, they're not that Prog, being more a Hard Rock kind of band.

Lar De Maravilhas (1975) is their most Prog album tough. If I would analyse only the music of the album, this would be a 4 stars without much thinking. But the fact is, I can understand the lyrics...

When it comes to the lyrics, Casa Das Máquinas was always lame, and it's no different here. I understand the surreal colors in many Prog Rock albums, and I like that. But it came all twisted to this band and they're singing about 'Conic Cilinders', 'Astralizations', 'Rays Of Moon' and 'Active Reflex' too much, too much. Will not even mention the 'Rock Epidemy'.

If you can't understand Portuguese it's a great album tough.

Casa Das Máquinas released three LP's between 1974 and 1977, their debut and third album offering hard-rock songs, but smack-bang in the middle of those two in 1975 was `Lar de Maravilhas', their most interesting and dynamic work that has since come to be recognised as something of a minor classic of prog-rock originating from Brazil. While adventurous rock would probably be a more accurate description than full-blown progressive rock, their hard-rock style here was loaded with spacey keyboards, symphonic arrangements, intricate direction changes and great variety, all driven by strong melodies sung in Portuguese with confident vocals and skilled instrumentation.

Opener ` Vou Morar No Ar' swaps acoustic guitar-lifted verses for soaring group harmonies and funky electric guitars over swirling spacey synths in place of a chorus. The title track `Lar De Maravilhas' has plenty of passionate plucked acoustic guitar and sweet group harmonies that float like a soothing breeze, but it also jumps back and forth between doomy slow-burn electric guitars and a distorted, other-wordly treated vocal. `Liberdade Espacial' is an addictive smouldering grooving rocker with nice thick bass and a cool melting synth break in the middle, there's traces of Yes throughout `Astraliza''o' with its rolling electronics, buoyant bass, weeping guitars and restrained symphonic Hammond organ finale, and lethargic echoing voices and cooing chorus harmonies of `Cilindro C'nico' get blasted with fiery electric guitar wailing and up-tempo rattling drums in the second half.

With its lengthy instrumental bookended passages, `Vale Verde' is the big pure prog moment of the disc, not far removed in parts from the sounds of German bands Novalis' `Sommerabend' and Epidaurus' `Earthly Paradise' albums. A positive whirling Moog theme, E.L.P-like Hammond bluster and eventually soft falsetto harmonies glide through the piece, and the dramatic symphonic ending is legendary. The pretty `Raios de Lua' is a dreamy and romantic acoustic ballad that warmly embraces, but `Epidemia de Rock' is nothing more than a throwaway (if still well performed) rock 'n roller that would have been more at home on the debut or follow-up album `Casa de Rock'. The band close on the two-part `O Sol/Reflexo Ativo' that opens with a lengthy narration delivered by a drifting psychedelic voice (almost reminding of a similar introduction on the closing piece `Encyclopedia Terra' off German band Mythos' debut) before surging into a triumphant Hammond and Mini Moog-laden symphonic climax.

The mix of hard and acid rock, spacey instrumentation and progressive inventiveness with pop smarts throughout `Lar de Maravilhas' proves to be very addictive, and the sumptuous vocals and harmonies just lift this wonderful album even higher. It's well-worth picking up if you've already got plenty of the `big' bands and albums in your collection and are looking to expand it with more obscure yet equally worthwhile releases, so you can't go wrong with Casa Das Máquinas' defining musical statement.

Four stars.

Casa das Maquinas was a 70´s band from Brazil that made some impact but never reached the heights of other more prog oriented groups like Mutantes or O Terço. The main reason for that I think it´s because the band was unable to come up with a very distinguished sound of their own, although they did produce some very fine music at the time, and Lar de Maravilhas is probably their very best. After Pique left the band they decided to change their musical style: out was the pop/rock/soul of their debut and enters the progressive/psychedelic/symphonic rock of the moment. For that they recruited a second drummer, Marinho Thomas, thus making Casa das Maquinas one of the very first brazilian bands to have two drummers as permanent members, and a new keyboards player, Mario Testoni Junior, one of the best players around.

The change within their sound was a radical one, but the album was well received, specially by the brazilian prog community. They certainly had the skill and songwriting abilities to pedal in the style and Lar de Maravilhas was a great leap forward, so much so it looked like it was a whole new band. Ok, the lyrics are not that good, but who cares? The vocals are above average and the instrumental passages are great, with some very inspired guitar/keyboards interplay, backed by a fine rhythm section. The songs stood well the test of time and some tracks like Astralização, Vale Verde and the title tracks are good samplers of the best prog rock produced in Brazil at the time, while Raios de Lua showed they could also write good prog folk stuff. The only exception is Epidemia de Rock, a typical simple rock and roll ditty, that may had worked well live, but really does not fit in here. I remember that almost all brazilian bands had to have a "real" rock song to prove they could... well.. rock. The cheese spoken words on the intro of O Sol/Reflexo Ativo is something they should have dropped off on the final cut. However, the remaining stuff more than compensate these missteps.

With a good production for the times, Lar de Maravilhas is one of the most interesting prog albums of the brazilian scene in the mid-70´s. It promised greater things that, unfortunately did not materialised. In any case, this a great find and an excellent addition to any prog rock music collection. Then, 4 stars it is.