MARK-1

Considered one of Indonesia's best progressive rock bands of the 70s, GIANT STEP got its start in 1973 in Bandung which is a city on the island of Java located east of the capital city Jakarta. This band was founded by Benny Soebardja who has been one of the most recognized musicians of the entire Indonesian rock scene. He started with early bands such as the cover band 'The Peels' and then with the band 'Shark Move' which crafted its own original compositions but after the shocking death of the co-founder Woman Loebis in a car accident, Soebardia decided to end Shark Move and start a new project. This led to the first lineup of his most famous band GIANT STEP which built upon the regional success of Shark Move but with the help of a UK lyricist named Bob Dook, the band began to add English lyrics to its works.

The first GIANT STEP album was titled MARK 1 but the band hadn't quite gone progressive yet as it would full force on the band's second album 'Giant On The Move.' MARK 1 featured ten songs with half of them in English and the other in its native Bahasa Indonesia language. GIANT STEP was also a regional hit because while most Indonesian rock bands were covering material from the more famous English bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple or even Black Sabbath, GIANT STEP was boldly developing its own style as well as penning all original tunes while casting its gaze towards a wider market abroad. While progressive rock would soon become its musical style of choice, this debut MARK 1 shows the band at its origins as a regular rock band that crafted melodic tunes with some slight progressive touches mainly heard in the Styx like keyboard runs.

MARK 1 gets off to a fiery start with 'Child Hood And The Seabird' with heavy guitar riffs, pounding bass, dramatic drum rolls and passionate lyrics sounding more like Deep Purple at their most energetic dripping with heavy rock bravado. The track is instantly addictive checking off all the qualities of a seasoned English heavy rock band and by far the best track on the album. The song is replete with sizzling instrumental workouts including stellar guitar solos and could easily match any of the English greats as it emulated the regions in between Zeppelin and Deep Purple. It's just too bad that the albums starts to taper off with the second track and slower goes downhill track by track. While the second track 'Far Away' is a more reserved affair with a slower tempo and acoustic guitar intro, the tune still has a dramatic flare all its own with nice overdubs of guitar harmonies and sound effects. While Soebardja delivered a call of the wild vocal performance on the first track, here he displays a more controlled stylistic shift that works equally as well and the contrast is quite welcome.

'Fortunate Paradise' while not a bad tune nevertheless seems to cement the album into mellow mode with acoustic guitar arpeggios, winy vocals and the dramatic outburst of keyboard oomf but basically stuck in ballad mode albeit with extremely catchy pop hooks. While so far so good the album just keeps going down hill as the tunes get sappier and sappier. While the first five tracks in English are passable especially if taken as a pop rock album that reminds me more of the Argentinian folk rock band Sui Generis than a bona fide heavy rock band at this point, the final five tracks in Indonesian start to sound like sappy love songs that you would imagine are played at weddings. In fact all i can imagine is that somewhere in Indonesia these tracks would be played on karaoke night. The saving grace is that the melodies are tight and catchy but the songs get super cheesy.

GIANT STEP's first album should rightfully be titled 'Giant Mistep' because the band hadn't quite found its direction yet. While the opening track is outstanding and the next couple of tracks are very good, the album unfortunately devolves into a head scratching WTF is going on here schmalzy pop shlop sorta thang. This is really one of those albums artists would rather forget about, similar to David Bowie's first album or even Genesis. The band exhibited clear talent but it was not firing on all pistons. This is definitely not the place to begin for your GIANT STEP journey. That would be the next album, 'Giant On The Move' where all the prog-o-lisciousness comes into fruition. Oh, and the production is awful.