BANDA ELÁSTICA

After their energetic and ethnic filled debut they really hit their stride with "Banda Elastica 2" my favourite, where they slow things down some and allow some space, plus they reduced the traditional sounding stuff. This sixth record is different again. No keyboards which is strange, plus we now have three sax players. A seven piece who decided this time to cover music by various modern composers instead of creating their own music. The results in my opinion are better than the debut but a step down from that second release.

My three favourite tracks are the ones where the flute, not the sax leads the way. That short 2 minute third song which is the first of a three part suite for the flute creating atmosphere. "Banda 1" at 7 1/2 minutes is pretty impressive. Just so much going on much of the time, plus we get space. Some rare inventive guitar on this one plus plenty of sax and flute. I really like the drumming on this one as well. Last top three is the opening section of "Three Pieces" at 4 1/2 minutes for a rare dark track with haunting atmosphere. Sparse is the word.

Still, this is very much a hit and miss affair with that second song "Azul Ocre" being an example of them going where I don't want to go, and that's the world of smooth sax. More hit than miss this one, but not in the league of their second album, and not quite 4 stars.

They would become a seven piece on that second record, adding a second horn player who also adds flute. We get some guest flute on the opener and third track here, but mostly it's sax and clarinet. We also get two drummers, although one is often adding marimba. There are actually some vocals on that fourth and seventh song, but that's it. I also find it interesting that on that second album they sprinkled in four tracks from this the debut as bonus tracks there, but not tagged on at the end. This record almost feels like a dry run compared to their next one.

"Banda Elastica 2" is the one to get in my opinion from 1989. I also recommend "Ai Tencargo" from 2003 but feel it's a step down from that classic second record.

"Cine Negro" is the 10 minute opener and it's quite faint and distant to start out with bass, some drum outbursts and other sounds that come and go. It finally kicks in some before 3 minutes to a fuller sound and this sounds really good as we get a rhythm and strange vocal expressions. A beat and flute too. A calm before 6 minutes as the drums and flute stop and horns and more start to come and go. Very sparse again, almost Chamber-like here. I like how it builds to the end with those intricate sounds.

"Como Esquizoides" opens with marimba and oboe before horns and drums kick in along with other sounds. Spanish sounding guitar follows. A change 2 minutes in as flute, drums, bass more take over. Marimbas too as it sort of starts and stops. "Recomenzando" opens with drums, horns and more creating a fuller sound here. Catchy as well as flute joins in. I like this one. This is the first of three great tracks in row.

"Infantos Terribles" opens with guitar and some depth. Sounds like rain sticks that come and go. Flute to the fore with lots of intricate sounds. The guitar and flute will trade off before the keyboards lead then back to the flute and guitar trade offs. Horns come and go. Lots of marimba here too. "Perverses Polmerfos" is mellow with picked guitar as flute, bass, drums and more join in. The guitar turns aggressive, a rare thing but it's brief. Marimba joins in then it settles back as contrasts continue. Dissonant horns 1 1/2 minutes in, bass clarinet too. It settles again then drums only before the bass joins in. Intricate sounds follow as it stays sparse. Love the electric piano starting around 5 minutes. So good, my favourite part. It ends after 6 1/2 minutes. Spanish sounding guitar follows then flute as it plays out.

"Espejismo" has these dissonant sounding pulses with atmosphere and more until around 3 minutes in, but it's still sparse with guitar over top. Horns before 4 minutes with rain sticks, percussion ad a beat. Exotic sounds follow as this plays out. Bass clarinet as well. "Alto A La Caceria" has the guitar and drums trading off at first before a steady sound follows. An avant sounding piece with prominent bass. Themes are repeated. Synths before 2 1/2 minutes.

"Pavor Real" has some nice aggressive guitar to start before marimba, bass, a beat and more take over. Horns too along with synths then the tempo picks up briefly. It will continue to shift though. Blasting horns after 1/2 minutes then another calm with bass only this time. Then it builds with synths, drums and more, guitar too. I like this. "Pesadila" has spacey synths to begin with before drums, bass and guitar join in. There's more then the horns trade off with the guitar. Marimba helps out then bass clarinet takes the lead after 1 1/2 minutes for a while. Spacey synths after 3 minutes along with marimba and drums.

"Derrumbes En Almibar" starts with guitar and drums. Pleasant is the word as flute and much more join in just before a minute. Horns come and go. A calm after 1 1/2 minutes with guitar and drums. Nice. Horns are back around 2 1/2 minutes. Some rare piano before 3 minutes. "Mambop" is traditional sounding with guest trumpet and percussion as horns honk. Vocals follow and this is so Spanish sounding as horns blast. A lot of start and stopping here. Piano leads for a while, lots of percussion too. Prominent bass too which is jazzy. Big finish.

Avant fans will love this especially if you like that Spanish flavour.

To my ears, Banda Elastica comes across as a vibrant live performing unit, and one that flows fairly smoothly to and from and in between avant jazz, avant progressive rock and free-form oriented variations of those, with a certain emphasis on folk and ethnic music details ? flute and marimba in particular ? that does give their material a fairly unique sound overall. Those with a deep fascination for challenging avant music, and a taste that includes an affection for both avant jazz and avant-garde progressive rock, come across as the ideal audience for this album. If you can recognize yourself in that description you will most likely enjoy this CD all the way through.

Forget about the instant jazzy Prog Rock of the band's debut, ''2'' is a much more experimental album with Banda Elastica exploring the pre-hispanic Folk fundamentals and the Chamber Music surroundings, coming up with a very complex album full of bizzare textures, which still maintain some great charm.Acoustic guitars, flutes and percussion have become leading instruments and are blended with contemporary instruments like bass, contrabass and saxes.The more archaic style of the band is quite attractive but very hard sounding, the more jazzy tunes come quite easier with some smooth interplays, which range from folky instrumentals to delicate and more proggy attempts with saxes, synths and a competent rhythm section in the forefront.The last part of the album sees Banda Elastica somewhat returning to a more Prog Rock style.Bass and drums have become solid entries in the music and the sound is enriched by some tremedous work on acoustic and electric guitars, very dreamy saxes and flutes, while the role of Rosino Seranno is more prominent with strong synthesizer runs along the way in a very Fusion-esque enviroment.

Skillful musicians, tight bandmates and great music explorers.''2'' is still a very complicated album for the average listener, but it certainly deserves some listening attempts by anyone who want to be characterized as a fan of adventurous music.Recommended.

This was denitely a very daring album regarding its year of release and today ''Banda Elastica'' sounds still fresh and captivating.It is a nice mixture of complicated Jazz/RIO music, featuring plenty of sax and clarinet passages, with Latin-American Folk and more proggy moments, usually highlighted by the nervous keyboards of Serrano.The compositions sound tight, innovative and really challenging, containing countless of interplays and breaks, making the whole listening quite difficult at moments but still enjoyable.The music is strongly based in Jazz/Fusion with very technical performances and a very rich sound, but the band blended it with some nice Latin-American traditional tunes, either coming out of the acoustic guitars and flutes or the somber violin parts and the marimba sounds, which are all over the place.Even better Banda Elastica were lucky enough to have a talented keyboardist and Serrano appears every now and then with some fiery synthesizers, jazzy piano paces and 70's-sounding organs to add the album a very proggy taste, ''Infrasapienz'' even sounds symphonic at moments.Just a couple of short uninteresting instrumental tracks sound like fillers in ''Banda Elastica'', hurting the album's consistency, however the rest of it is pretty outstanding for the most of its length.

Adventurous and complex Jazz/Fusion/Prog of very high musical level and significant value.Strongly recommended to fans who starve for endless interplays and changing moods...3.5 stars.

I'm admittedly no fan of, let alone an expert for RIO or Avant-Prog but this album here contains exactly the right food for my ears which are used to a wide range of sounds I can say despite all humility. The spare sources in the net with informations about this exceptional Mexican band and their biography here are saying that their music has similarities to the one of HENRY COW. I tried to enjoy already as well H.C. some time ago but found them quite hard to digest compared to B.E. I've to say. They might have been used as a reference since they were one of the few bands that were using wind instruments in such kind of jazz-fusion/RIO blend. Anyway in a sub-genre like RIO/Avant-Prog gathering bands whose main features are uniqueness and polarisation it's supposed to be quite difficult to draw any comparisons. Of course enjoyment of music and taste preference always has to be a very personal thing and thus perception of a certain kind of music can differ a lot between people. So if anyone would ask me how B.E. sounds alike and which band they could be compared with I frankly could not tell any. I just can speak for myself in saying that usually I'm not a great fan of extreme oddity and dissonance but I recently started to enjoy more and more unique and adventurous artists like FRENCH TV, TAAL or HÖYRY-KONE. This doesn't mean that B.E. is sounding similar to any of them but all of those bands might have in common that their music was able to appeal to me right from the very first listen which is not really a typical feature for that sub-genre.

So let me try to describe how B.E.'s music sounds here on this masterly record. In some way it's a perfect blend of jazz fusion, chamber rock and ethnic influences with some odd RIO/Avant elements added in a good measure. This album is able to hold my attention right from the first note until its very end without becoming enervating or indigestive at any moment which doesn't happen very often to me actually. This fact alone is already a very good reason for me to rate it with the full score. Second striking evidence is the incredible broad range of instruments they are using, starting from typical folk-type ones like acoustic guitar, percussion, marimbas or flute, over jazz-type ones like sax, clarinet, contrabass up to synthesizer sounds adding sometimes even a kind of alien and out-of-space atmosphere with strange tunes that resemble tortured cats or something like that. Strangest but still fully enjoyable track might be "Cine Negro" revealing lots of experimental sounds but as well wonderful flute play. Most of the others could be described as some adventurous Spanish/Latin American flavoured jazz-fusion. "Alto a la Caceria" shows the highest proportion of synthesizer keyboards and might be the least experimental one apart from the last one, which is plain Latin Jazz.

For sure B.E.'s second album is an exceptional and highly versatile one that should appeal to anyone preferring music that is different from anything else and fully enjoyable at the same time. Highly recommended and fully deserved 5 stars!

I also want to say that for me this isn`t their best album, at least i prefer other 2 more than this, so this is just a caution or introduction about this album and this review .

First of all (and the less important thing) i have to say that the cover art is awful, something like clows playing music and also the titles and colours are horrible; well if you dont know, Banda Elastica is a band which dont use vocals, only instrumental.

"Tambora" this album start with that song which is something like an introduction, less than a minute, you maybe will imagine like if you are in a circus or something like that. Next to it you will find a pack of 6 short songs called "Micropiezas", which in english means Little Pieces, all of them have it`s own name, but all toghether form only one song, nothing new, nothign to get excited of proud of, so many short songs the most of them are less than 1 minute. "Suite Regresiva" is an excellent song, for sure one of the best songs here, where you can appreciate the quality of the sound and musicianship, a thing that i enjoy a lot is the use of percussion, it gives ita nice and better sound , this song is divided in 4 pieces, and it`s the largest song in the album, also you will appreciate how they "play" with time signatures.

"Presentacion" (introduction) as the title say is another mid intro, horrible IMO becaus is only the sound of a host introducing something or someone. "Galeria de Pelafustanes" is the part of tha album that i enjoy the most, it is another pack of 3 songs with names of people, i like them a lot, elegant songs, with an exquisite guitar sound, and a superb sax dirung the songs, each one has a lenght of 3 minutes aprox, but very nice.

"Insomnio" is another great song, with a bit changes in the time and tempo, but nothing new to show us. I wont review the last songs, and maybe you`ll say im too lazy, but honestly all of them are quite similar, so i think i have nothing more to contribute to this review. You will find some influence of Univers Zero (not because of the dark sound) and maybe Gong.

As i said above, this is not my favorite Banda Elastica`s album, and i dont like it so so much, anyway i dont think it`s a bad album, so i recommend it only to people who already know the band, or who only wish to dig them more.

For me 3 stars, good but non-essential.