WHY ?

Considered the band that kicked off the entire progressive rock scene in Spain, the Barcelona based MÁQUINA! had its origins in the folk band Group de Folk which engaged in the contemporary trend of mixing contemporary folk rock with a protest musical style called nova cançó which used the Catalan language for its lyrical delivery due to the fact all minority languages were banned under the Franco dictatorship. This band would end in the late 60s and two of its members, Jordi Batiste (vocals, flute, bass) and Enric Herrera (keyboards) decided they wanted to electrify their sound and move into the world of rock. Initially the duo was seeking only a guitarist to perform as a trio but ended up as a quartet with Lluís Cabanach on guitar and Santiago Garcia on drums however things were never so easy in Spain at the time and members could be called into military duty at any time.

After officially forming MÁQUINA! in 1968, it would take two years for the band to find enough stability to record an album and even then Jordi Bastiste was called to duty in the middle of recording the album! The band's first album WHY? came out in 1970 and as a result of all the members coming and going found various musicians playing on certain tracks even though the album only featured four tracks, two of which were basically different improvisations built around the title track that swallowed up most of the album's playing time. Thinking more internationally than local, MÁQUINA! sang all their lyrics in English unlike the majority of Catalonian bands that favored the local Catalan folk flavored nova cançó. While the band's ambitions were against the grain, MÁQUINA! found support from Ángel Fábregas and his label Als 4 Vents and were allowed to work in exchange for recording privileges and promotion.

The band started out with a couple pop oriented singles in a 60s psychedelic rock style in 1969 and surprisingly found that the first single "Lands Of Perfection / Let's Get Smashed" sold well over 10,000 copies and was well received by critics. This allowed a little more leeway when it came time to record the band's first album WHY? which was released the following year in the summer of 1970. While bookended by the opening "I Believe" and ending "Le Me Be Born" which are short catchy psychedelic rock numbers that deliver the same effect as a pop single, the majority of the album featured a lengthy jamming session of the title track split into two parts. While the track begins in the same sort of funky acid rock style that the other two shorter tracks deliver, the track continues on into nearly 25 minutes of improvisational variations on the basic melodic theme presented at the beginning and unleashing extremely volatile moments of acid rock as well as off the wall avant-garde excursions into wild formless freak outs that wouldn't sound out of place on some of the Krautrock scene's wilder moments.

Of course during that 25 minutes the band also exercised intricate time signature deviations and unthinkable (for Spain) adventurous experimentalism that became a huge hit on the live circuit. The band is notable for playing at the Salón Iris on February 22, 1970 in Barcelona and is cited to be the time and place where progressive rock was born in Spain. This set off a chain reaction and although Spain was hampered by the Franco government to rush into the prog thing like the rest of Europe, the band was certainly ground zero for all the other bands in the nation to follow suit. Unfortunately the band experienced a very unusual set of circumstances with Enric Herrera leaving the band and starting another brass rock band with the very same band name! This undoubtedly confused the public and led to lawsuits and hostility. The results ended up being that both versions of the band would disintegrate in 1972 leaving MÁQUINA! as a one album band although throughout its short career it did release six singles.

For anyone familiar with Spanish prog bands, MÁQUINA! left no clues that it emerged from Spain at all. No traces of local folk flavors, no homegrown languages on board and the style of prog played was more akin to the British scene along with percussive jamming sessions that were closer to the American Santana than anything European. An oddball of an album that sounds pretty tame at first but slowly and incrementally transmogrifies into a beast of the avant-garde with the ending part of the first part of the title track and the majority of the second part taking you on a wild unhinged musical journey. Never mind the lame album cover art! This is fascinating early Spanish prog album that will please fans of crazy prog that features both melodic hooks and unhinged deviations into the freak-a-zoid zone.