Detailed Reviews [Cabezas De Cera - 2001 - "Cabezas De Cera"]

Cabezas De Cera (Mexico) - 2001 - "Cabezas De Cera"
(48 min, 'CDC'/"Luna Negra")

Prologue. This and both of the following reviews are the continuation of the Overall View on the Mexican premier Prog label "Luna Negra", i.e. on all of the CDs ever released by it. (Hopefully, this unique in its own way Overall View on the creation of the whole label will be on the road for years to come.) Meanwhile, the fact that Mexico is one of the several vanguards of contemporary Progressive Rock movement becomes more and more obvious.

The Album. Lately, I've heard the music of CDC represents a mix of traditional Rock music and Progressive Rock. Well, well, well. Fortunately, so far I haven't lost my ears so I won't hang the noodles of errors on the ears of my readers. Actually, CDC perform a *pure* progressive music: this is more than a unique blend of a wide-variety of Progressive Rock genres and sub-genres. Here are general characteristics of all of the album's compositions. Highly complex arrangements with lots of very unexpected changes of tempos, themes and moods, variegated, quirky, fluid to fast, often atonal yet always harmonic solos and passages of Mauricio Sotelo's Grand Stick, electric and acoustic guitar and Ramses Luna's flutes, saxophone and clarinet, as well as interplay between all of these instruments. All of it goes with the accompaniment of Francisco Sotelo's either powerful drumming or soft playing the percussion. It needs to be said that Mauricio's Grand Stick sounds incredibly diverse, amazingly simulating and the sounds of analog and digital keyboards and even vibraphone and piano, the wonderful solos of which play a major part in creating the arrangements on Un Pueblo Escondido and Frontiera, respectively. While flute solos by Ramses always sound symphonic, most of his solos on clarinet and saxophone are the composed improvisations, which on the whole is typical for both the (progressive) Jazz-Fusion and RIO genres. Sax solos often sound wild and as if irrational with regard to a general compositional scheme, so their combination with Art-Rock-ish symphonic passages of acoustic guitar (on Gitana, Frontiera, and Al Aire) and ubiquitous keyboard-like chords of Grand Stick sound really marvelous. Duets and trios, created by the mid-tempo solos of electric and bass guitars and (Grand Stick's) vibraphone and rather harsh high-speed passages of violin, are the main characters of arrangements on Un Pueblo Escondido. Almost everything, though, is built here on the iron frames of contrast. Encontador de Serpenties, where there are a lot of diverse and masterful interplay between flutes and acoustic guitars, apart from the other arrangements, was created according to classic laws of complex, vintage Symphonic Art-Rock. Caravana is filled with Eastern colours created by solos of flute, electric guitar, and percussion, though there also are atonal solos and interplay between trombone and clarinet. Veintuno and Coxhilla represent a blend of Art-Rock and Prog-Metal. Thanks to the distinct contrast between heavy yet slow and doom-y riffs of electric guitar and fast, wild and quirky solos of sax and clarinet, Coxhilla sounds especially impressive. Pretexto a un Texto Fragmentado consists of very effective interchanges of dramatic recitatives, surrounded by varied psychedelic sounds, and eclectically hypnotic parts of unusual spacey music. There are, though, enough of the elements of Psychedelic and (especially) Space Rock on the album in general.

Summary. The Cabezas De Cera debut album, which is a real progressive gem, has just once again shown that Mexico is very rich in Progressive Rock talents and especially - with regard to the performers whose music is highly innovative, unique and at the same time distinctly Mexican. Despite the fact that, apart from the elements of a few of sub-genres such as Space and Psychedelic Rock, there are structures of the first four main genres of Prog (Classic Art-Rock, Jazz-Fusion, RIO, and Prog-Metal) in the music of CDC, on the whole it doesn't fit any of them. In that way, CDC is nothing else but the band of Fifth Element. (By the way, although the fifth main element-genre of Prog was 'found' by one Progressor just in the beginning of the year of 2001 Anno Domini, it grows by leaps and bounds.)

VM. December 12, 2001