HEAVEN

Horns... The album with the simple name "Brass Rock 1", recorded in 1971 by the British band called Heaven, is, in fact, their one and only album. This short-lived group may be seen as a project due to large number of musicians and instruments used during the recording, considering also the fact that because of its size the group had difficulties with touring and concentrated more in studio recording. As suggested by the name of the album, what we hear is brass-rock - exactly the kind of music one expects from the group with so massive horn section, including five people playing different kinds of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, clarinets, flugelhorns, flutes and so on. Besides this, there are also piano, drums, guitars and bass, plus some vocals in most tracks, which together sounds like a mini- orchestra. The vocal parts remind me of such groups as If or Colosseum. The music is pretty variative, from some (almost) hard-rock played energetically, where guitars and drums are dominating instruments, supported by the furious horn section, to some pastoral motifs (like in "Morning coffee"), where the mild sound of a flute is the prominent one. Although there is nothing groundbreaking in their music, the overall feeling after the listening is quite nice, if you like jazz-rock in general and brass-rock in particular, of course. So those who like the archival prog from the early 70s should pay attention to this album, released by Esoteric records some years ago.