Eduardo Bort - st,LP,1974,Spain

Eduardo Bort's self-titled album from 1975 contains four long tracks of spacey, melodic progressive rock with several longer acoustic/folky passages as well. The first track "Thoughts" reminds me a bit of the 70's Italian bands (especially the better parts on the Uno album). "Pictures of Sadness" has some great mellotron and excellent spacey guitar playing. Bort' s guitar playing reminds me both of Jimi Hendrix and Steve Hillage. By far the weakest point are the vocals. The flat, heavily accented singing is rather poor, but it doesn't spoil the album for me. The last, 12-minute track "Yann" starts with incredible mellotron/guitar/mini-moog interplay. This section could have been culled from Steve Hillage's masterpiece Fish rising. Superb. After about four minutes, part two of the track starts in a more acoustic setting, unfortunately with the worst of the vocal contributions. About two minutes later an instrumental section follows with nice guitar strumming and soloing by Bort. At about nine minutes, the mellotron re-enters with a romantic symphonic theme (and variations) until the track ends. Not a flawless album, but despite the weak vocals an enjoyable piece of work with occasionally some outstanding passages. (Sjef Oellers, as reviewed in Gnosis)

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