LA PURA REALIDAD

La Pura Realidad is a new ensemble from Mexico - and from Mexic's/Latin American brave "history" and "cycle" of prog rock - playing with a complex vein, with an absurd (at first) perfection and with a hardly easy instrumental pure mechanic. The band's first album can be a hit for many, a special album for some, and in rest a good, steely work.

The ensemble plays friendly and with a full gift, the violinist being the musician you could most admire: he gives both a raw and suave, fas and doused, killer and natural interpretation, with improvised, steamy or just springing melodies, some assumably folk or popular-extracted, others intense or even properly new (as in original), while small parts are just wicked or easy, as to sound cultivated and strong. The violin is definitely the special instrument in this quite typical (on the outside) prog rock band, its grand musicality not being spoiled within the rock and melody registers, except some ambient or even soft post-rock oozes. Besides Hanna Hipakka, La Pura Realidad is a witty and loud character band, the lead guitarist and drummer (there are many guests in this debut) doing all sort of hard, attractive or less fair tricks, while, sadly, the keyboardist and the synthesizer guest player have a cloudy role. Two saxophonists add up color and roast richness, once in a while, I myself am just not overly impressed. Hardest to imagine in this ensemble is someone taking on the vocals - and doing it as perfect as the violin, guitar or bass drums are tuned - because La Pura Realidad obviously loves an universe of instrumental forms, and what they do is the real deal, whatever the quality.

Praises aside, this band's chilling music can rapture you on its own, because it has quality, it has some overwhelming small emotions within all the acting and tenacious streaming, and because it shares a bit of progressive excessive influence, which means an achieved artistic matureness. Of course, you can think of King Crimson while the instrumental improvisations and solid visions step on your firmly, even of Gentle Giant, when the atmosphere is a subtle dance or a peculiar sequence of challenging techniques and crazy melodies (though rarer) - but La Pura Realidad is much more than that, so that, not for no reason, their little music (so far) has an extended echo into the Latin American unique rock character. Plus, doubtlessly, they are unique themselves. I did thought of Cabezas De Cera while listening, also because of the instrumental impetuosity, nevertheless that band really rules anything that's on prog rock's new music ground, as far as the a particular style of it goes; La Pura Realidad is not quite the same. In rest, many thoughts can fly off into many other directions, since the essential material of La Pura Realidad is complex and fire-worked, after which the music is, finally, the supreme character in setting straight how well you are impressed.

Out of the juicy pieces, Sonando, also the most epic composition, would be top outstanding - in there goes everything deep and special: from melancholy to rawness and improvisation, from dances made into peculiar notes to a rhythm-less passionate play, from pure rock to folk and pop-embalmed forces, from instrumental purity to several forms of inner reflections and expressions - and so on. Alegria and La Realidad are good (with very good spots), evolving every bit of powerful and artistic instrumental gesture, and not forgetting the breeze of a cute melody, the toughness of rock intermissions or the flake of a "latin" vitality. Maria disappoints through its easy melodies and funny-sided chords, while Roja Ciudad is not a bad "hard symph" piece, but lasts just like a wind of fusion prog.

Concluding, La Pura Realidad steps in very nice with its full instrumental delight and its strong mood and music debut. For now, the band's pretty scarce on main progressive rock references, a thing that should change as soon as possible, given how worthy they are - or insist to be, everything of their work seeming like a proper dedication to the spirit and the wheels of new prog rock. Worthiness and the pleasure of thorny rock, in the end, are the best of my four stars.