SHOOTING ALBATROSS

Abel Ganz

Neo-Prog

4.01 | 198 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

erik neuteboom
Prog Reviewer

FIRST REVIEW OF THIS ALBUM

At about 24 years after their debut album Gratuitous Flash (1984) and 14 years after their latest studio-album The Deafening Silence (1994), Scottish formation Abel Ganz has released a comeback CD entitled Shooting Albatross.

Since Abel Ganz started to make music in the Eighties their sound is considered as neo-prog (like contemporaries Marillion, IQ and Pendragon) but on this new album my musical impression is that the sound is a blend of Seventies inspired symphonic rock and folk music. The four long compositions (between 12 and 24 minutes) contain lots of shifting moods and a lush instrumentation like the use of the Indian sitar (electric version in Sheepish) and the Greek bouzouki (in Sheepish en Ventura). I enjoyed the contrast between the folky interludes featuring 12-string acoustic guitars, whistles, banjo, mandolin and flute (beautifully blended with instruments like the harpsichord, Mellotron or classical guitar) and the symphonic rock parts with electric guitar (fiery, wah-wah drenched in So Far and a strongly build-up, sensitive solo in Ventura) and vintage keyboards like the Fender Rhodes elektric piano, the Hammond organ, the Minimoog synthesizer and the unsurpassed Mellotron, I didn't know that Abel Ganz was able to make such a captivating progrock! The vocals are handled by several singers, including Alan Reed (in the long track So Far), of Pallas fame but once he joined Abel Ganz.

I hope this new Abel Ganz album will got the attention it deserves, for me it was almost a musical revalation! My rating: 3,5 stars.

erik neuteboom | 3/5 | 2008-5-25

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