from David Shire - The Conversation (1974/2001)

 

As usual for soundtracks, even for one of Coppola's (discreetly) greatest films (beware, spoilers ahead), The Conversation suffers from consisting mostly of minor variations on a main theme. Even when it breaks free from it, for a couple of snappy jazz numbers, it kills the mood produced by said theme which, in itself, is fantastic, and (like that final panoramic shot, going back and forth, as if mimicking a security camera, of Gene Hackman playing his sax in the middle of a presumably bugged apartment futilely ripped to shreds) perfectly embodies the film's atmosphere of ultimately resigned surrender to all-pervading suspicion, surveillance, menace and paranoia (obviously, a now unrelatable 1970's problem). Still, once is enough. A few variations do try to reach for some unusual tools, venturing timidly into musique concrète, but all of it is always cut short by a constant return to that inescapable theme, whose recurrence could even be said to bear a certain thematic pertinence. However, when its execution follows (no matter how tastefully) the principle of least artistic effort, it can still make you rapidly feel that, like good old Gene, you're just being made to run around in circles.

from Bacamarte / Mário Neto - Sete Cidades (1999)

 

from Bacamarte - Depois do fim (1983)

Mário Neto was obviously a skilled guitarist, but that's not enough to elevate this rather generic 1980's brazilian prog affair (where there's not even anything specifically 'brazilian' to begin with). While it has gained something of a cult status within the 'community', I actually think the album Neto released in 1999, Sete Cidades, where he gets to show off all he wants, has a higher ratio of interesting compositional and instrumental bits; even if, overall, it is clearly under-produced (maybe to its own benefit) and marred by similar problems as this one, mostly its all round lyrical ingenuousness.

Anyway, it's actually funny how, for a genre that's reputed for being complex and pretentious, you often get in these records a single track that demonstrates, by contrast, how often proggers dialed back the adventurousness they were capable of, to meet some sort of commercial expectations, thus aesthetically cancelling what the genre was supposed to be all about. Here, it is "Controvérsia", which, if you can give some of those badly dated farty moog sounds a pass, is a short instrumental track that possibly has as much musical moxie as the rest of the album combined, because, apparently, the market ruled that having a girl sing corny melodies about the end of the world (no matter how topical that keeps getting) over synth chords with some soloing in between is "progressive". I beg to differ.

from Modern Music Band - Modern Music Band (1972)

Here's one of those 1970's bands whose eagerness to be "modern" (which this swedish outfit equated with putting together some brass/hammond-driven proto-progressive pop-rock songs, à la early days Chicago) actually entailed that their music quickly sounded rather passé. Neither exciting nor offensive, all the songs just pass me by, and the instrumental breaks aren't given enough time to showcase anything other than standard competence, which is a shame, because, judging by the progressive jazzy intro "Betjänten", if the band had been left to their own design, without having to pay lip service to some hey-I'm-hip vocalizing, I could see this being an album I would be happy running my mouth about.

from Amoebic Ensemble - Limbic Rage (1995)

Proto-avant prog, of the pseudo-gypsy wedding persuasion, that can't help but feel somewhat incomplete without the proper week-long reception - that is, with the exception of "What I Did Last Summer", that does its best to implant you with the false memory of having been there and partying so hard that you can't remember a single thing about it - which I don't, so it must be true, because that is the way of the world now.

from Rui Júnior - O Ó Que Som Tem? (1983)

There is usually no deeper chasm between the relative enjoyment musicians and spectators can get from a musical performance than the one produced by an all-(unpitched)-percussion collective - that is, except the one resulting from hearing it on record, and this isn't the album to disprove that. There was some instrumental variety in this portuguese ensemble's kit, which could make for a decent showcase - although it all surprisingly lacks rhythmic punch, as if their neighbors had threatened 'next time' they would call the cops -, and the opener "Recolhimento", beginning with some welcome chants and bagpipes (that could have made a difference going forward, but only return, too little too late, in the final tracks), making it sound like you're following a medieval procession of monks into a recondite forest for some cabbalistic rituals, can give you hope that maybe there'll be something more to this; but then you enter a clearing, everyone takes off their cloaks, and it turn's out it's just a bunch of dudes arranging themselves into a more worldly drum circle, so, either be ready to pick up a djembe and join in, or you might want to bring some aspirin along just in case.