Category: progressive rock

The Viola Crayola – Music: Breathing Of Statues (1974)

“You know, there are great guitar trio albums and then there’s San Antonio’s Viola Crayola. This jazzy psych freakout jam album is just remarkable and sounds about 15 years ahead of its time in technique. And fortunately it IS of its era sound-wise. This thing just rips and shreds and wah-wah’s until you collapse from exhaustion. The last 2 minute goofball track allows us to see Viola’s mentor – Mr. Zappa. If these guys released this in 1991, there would be a monthly feature in Guitar Player for him. Unfortunately, Tony Viola died tragically later in 1974. Album is only about 29 minutes long. A bootleg exists.”

Siglo Cero – Latinoamerica (1970)

“After The Speakers split in 1969, Humberto Monroy co-founded Siglo cero with Jaime Rodriguez, Mario Renee, Ferdie Fernández and Speaker’s drummer Roberto Fiorilli. Siglo cero was a progressive rock outfit, with major jazz influences. In 1970 they released Festival de la Vida, which was recorded live the 27th of June of the same year at a performance in Bogotá’s Parque Nacional, before 10,000 people.”

Laddio Bolocko – The Life & Times Of Laddio Bolocko (2002)

“It was very intuitive. A lot of it came just out of jamming. Purely improvised jamming. We were starting to realize, listening back to the improvisations, that they were a lot more fun and a lot more interesting to listen to when we found an idea, hung onto it and played it out… We had developed our own compositional/improvisational language together. I think that was one of the real special things about the band, it came from very organic origins because it was really just spawned from playing… from listening to each other and having that intuitiveness.”

Psycho – Live at Viljandi (1976)

“Psycho plays an important role in Estonian prog, and was one of the most aggressive and innovative bands of the day. During its heyday of 1976-77, the band played an aggressive form of instrumental prog with a lot of improvisation, much like the Wetton-era of King Crimson. Many of the tracks were as ambitious as the aforementioned prog kings, such as the ethnically-influenced odd-time wonder “Raja 21/8” and many others. No other Estonian band matched these guys in their improv prowess; rather, not many bands around Europe during those days managed that feat either.”

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