A compilation album is the ideal way to introduce new music, new bands to the unsuspecting audience. Pangea 2 highlights ten South-American bands and comes packed in a lavish 32 page A5 size booklet. Oxomaxoma delivers a decent amount of experiment, not in the least by using samples and transforming the vocals. Dino Brassea is the recent singer with the Mexican band Cast and together with guitarist Fransisco Hernandez he delivers "Palabras," a nice illustration of his compositorial skills. Throughout "La Muerte" the band Otho highlights some great organ. Yet it concerns a very young band so there still remains a lot of work to be done in order to fine tune their material. The name Nirgal Vallis will be no secret to most of our readers (see the album Y Murio La Tarde released by Musea way back in 1995). If you know that their track "Abismo" has been written by none other than José Luis Fernandez-Ledesma, offering both the flute and violin enough room to "shine," then you certainly know that this is indeed a great track in the purest of sympho traditions. La Mansion is created out of the mutual interest and adoration for Marilyn Manson. Apart from very loud guitars and an irritating voice you don't have to expect much from their "Fallen Eagle." Right at the very edge of deathmetal is where Antiqua is situated. The band tries to play the grunt voice off against the fragile vocals of Monica Martinez but can't really impress us. At first it's like Eduardo and Ernesto, both from Microritmia, can't really keep the rhythm. "Paneo" tries to follow a minimalistic pattern as if it was their very first Cubase experiment! Multi-instrumentalist Jorge Avelais tries to include as many different styles as possible all rolled into one just like Samla Mammas Manna used to do. Four short fragments are the calling card of the experimental Banda Elastica. The bass certainly plays a very prominent role. Could this be the Mexican Soft Machine ? The omni-present Perfume De Mujer gives us the proof that the South-American prog scene has classical symphonic rock on one side and almost unapproachable avantgarde on the other by means of their collective improvisation "Habana Vieja'". In all some good tracks and some less interesting stuff but in the end it gives us a good view of what's happening and that's the main thing after all! Reviewed by: John 'Bobo' Bollenberg |
