AFRICAN DAY

The Jo'burgh quintet's debut album was recorded with a few months' practice of their star track, Africa Day, an album that came out in 71, when many things were indeed possible, including five white South Africans playing much of their music learnt from Black Africa. Comuing with a stunning sunset group shot the album came with all lyrics, some mandatory for radio airplay in RSA.

The album start with their 17-mins epic cover all of side 1 (let me dream I own the vinyl for a few minutes), which has us jumping into all kinds of moods (even one closely inspired by Black Widow's Come to the Sabbath), but often retaining a black African heritage (mostly in vocals and acoustic guitar playing) and a short recited intro (Procol's In Twas Held in I), and even a free-jazz passage but on the whole, Hawk comes with their own personality. If it sounds African, it's nothing like Osibisa, Assagai or Demon Fuzz, but at the same time it is a bit all of those too...

The album's flipside contains a series of shorter tracks starting with the Zulu-like rhythm crossed with some late-60's psych song called Happy Man. Much more personal is the acoustic Look Up Brother, being their best song on the flipside. Love Song manages to sound like early Jethro Tull, while Harrison-penned Here Comes the Sun is not the best I could've imagined. a bit of a miss here, but the previous Kissed By the Sun is another brilliant African guitar and impressive percussion track made up for it

The four bonus live tracks are not bringing much added value; even two of them are not on the album. Both African rondo and The Hunt are typical guitar track from the continent, where Hawk is best at their games. While not really extraordinary prog album, this is, it one to classify in the African scene, along with Osibisa's first two albums.

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