BANDA ELASTICA 2

I'm admittedly no fan of, let alone an expert for RIO or Avant-Prog but this album here contains exactly the right food for my ears which are used to a wide range of sounds I can say despite all humility. The spare sources in the net with informations about this exceptional Mexican band and their biography here are saying that their music has similarities to the one of HENRY COW. I tried to enjoy already as well H.C. some time ago but found them quite hard to digest compared to B.E. I've to say. They might have been used as a reference since they were one of the few bands that were using wind instruments in such kind of jazz-fusion/RIO blend. Anyway in a sub-genre like RIO/Avant-Prog gathering bands whose main features are uniqueness and polarisation it's supposed to be quite difficult to draw any comparisons. Of course enjoyment of music and taste preference always has to be a very personal thing and thus perception of a certain kind of music can differ a lot between people. So if anyone would ask me how B.E. sounds alike and which band they could be compared with I frankly could not tell any. I just can speak for myself in saying that usually I'm not a great fan of extreme oddity and dissonance but I recently started to enjoy more and more unique and adventurous artists like FRENCH TV, TAAL or HÖYRY-KONE. This doesn't mean that B.E. is sounding similar to any of them but all of those bands might have in common that their music was able to appeal to me right from the very first listen which is not really a typical feature for that sub-genre.

So let me try to describe how B.E.'s music sounds here on this masterly record. In some way it's a perfect blend of jazz fusion, chamber rock and ethnic influences with some odd RIO/Avant elements added in a good measure. This album is able to hold my attention right from the first note until its very end without becoming enervating or indigestive at any moment which doesn't happen very often to me actually. This fact alone is already a very good reason for me to rate it with the full score. Second striking evidence is the incredible broad range of instruments they are using, starting from typical folk-type ones like acoustic guitar, percussion, marimbas or flute, over jazz-type ones like sax, clarinet, contrabass up to synthesizer sounds adding sometimes even a kind of alien and out-of-space atmosphere with strange tunes that resemble tortured cats or something like that. Strangest but still fully enjoyable track might be "Cine Negro" revealing lots of experimental sounds but as well wonderful flute play. Most of the others could be described as some adventurous Spanish/Latin American flavoured jazz-fusion. "Alto a la Caceria" shows the highest proportion of synthesizer keyboards and might be the least experimental one apart from the last one, which is plain Latin Jazz.

For sure B.E.'s second album is an exceptional and highly versatile one that should appeal to anyone preferring music that is different from anything else and fully enjoyable at the same time. Highly recommended and fully deserved 5 stars!

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