Brazilian keyboardist Alexandre Maraslis brings us an exciting slice of prog/fusion with his release Maraslis. The tracks on this collection range from full blown prog epics to all-to-brief jazz interludes. Accompanied by the talents of Alex Frias on guitar, Braulio Drummond on drums and Pedro Baldanza on bass they turn in some very tight and inspiring performances. Additional musicians include Artur Cirio on guitar and violin and Marcos De Pinho on violin, as well as Beth Dau providing vocals. The album opens with the 20+ minute epic Vedas. From the opening strains this feels like a mix of Keith Emerson meets Brand X - About 3 minutes in everything changes and the song moves into a more pastoral and orchestral feel and arrival of Beth Dau's vocals. I will take a moment here to talk about the vocals on this disc - I truly feel that Beth is a fantastic vocalist, but I much prefer her vocals on some of the later tracks of the album where she sings in Portuguese, as the English vocals on Vedas (and later on Everywhere) do not flow as well and sound somewhat forced - they are very good, but just do not sound “natural”. Meanwhile, back to the track - before the track returns to Hammond organ driven sections there is an incredible guitar solo which has a definite David Gilmour feel to it. The second half of the track features some fantastic musical interplay mostly between keyboards and guitars over a very tight rhythm section - many of the sections bring to mind Triumvirat. The beautiful Constelacoes follows prominently featuring piano and Beth Dau's fantastic vocals. Towards the end of the track it becomes more orchestral. Next up we come to Vidas Que Vao Parte 1 which is straight up piano/bass/drums jazz. The playing on this piece is precise and tight. A great little track. My personal favourite track The Krebs Cycle follows. A prog epic which moves through a number of moods and movements and again features some incredible interplay between keys and guitar as well as some fantastic soloing Vidas Que Vao Parte 2 follows - like part 1- a brief interlude of jazz, this time adding vocals to previous trio. Everywhere starts off as a fairly straight forward track with English vocals but about three and half minutes in some interplay between synthesizer and drums adds a whole new element to the track before dropping into a jazz section of piano/bass/drums and guitar and then heading back to the way things started. The track becomes a bit disjointed but features some incredible playing The album closes off with Vidas Que Vao Parte 3 which expands on the earlier parts and builds to a fairly progressive rock ending reminiscent of Genesis. Overall this is a very good album. It features some world-class playing and, while some of the tracks lack continuity, the compositions themselves are quite well done. ***+ David Carswell Where to buy? |
