SPEKTAKEL

Little that I know about this band until I found it was featured at this site and this is the album before the band named after SFF. I'm quite familiar with the latter as it was part of my collection in the past during my schooldays. Looking at the inlay, it's quite surprising that the bad was actually a Deep Purple cover band because the music presented here in this album is much proggier than any Deep Purple albums. As the inlay says this band always started their gigs with cover of Deep Purple followed with long improvisations until the gigs were ended 5 hours later.

The album starts off with an epic "The Eternal Question" (15:32) with a blast of music that reminds me to a mixture of King Crimson, Van Der Graff Generator, Genesis and Deep Purple music with attractive guitar solo in a style of King Crimson's Robert Fripp augmented with organ work and dynamic bass lines. The intro is really promising and it represents the early 70s style. Throughout the opening., the music flow with some breaks demonstrating guitar solo or mellotron blast. The music eventually cools down into mellow part with combination of guitar fills and bassline. Vocal enters during mellow part and the music moves into symphonic style in the vein of early King Crimson. It's an excellent track.

"Big Boss' Eyes" (8:58) is a mellow track with blues-influenced style. Overall tone of the song is dark with some excellent variation of styles after lyrical verses. The music then gives a chance for bass guitar to showcase the low register notes, accentuated with mellotron sounds at background. I can here some influence of Gentle Giant as well especially on singing style. Fans of classic symphonic prog would find this track entertaining.

"7 Pounds Tommy" (17:34) brings the music into higher energy with excellent combination of keyboard / organ, guitar and bass guitar. Drums are played dynamically here. The music provides some surprises as it has varied combination of high and low points. In a way it reminds me also on the music of early Eloy. The relatively complex structure reconfirms the fact that this is a symphonic prog band and it's hard to believe that this band was originally played Deep Purple songs.

Overall, this is an excellent addition to any prog music collection. Those who love mellotron-drenched compositions, this album is devoted to you. Not only mellotron, guitar is also dominant. In terms of music approach, this band is quite unique as the members of the band and their families live together in the same house and they wrote songs together. Unfortunately this band was short-lived. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW