CALIBRATED COLLISION COURSE (E)

The Spanish prog band Galadriel recorded four albums from 1988. It's a well-respected name in the progressive genre. However, are they still a band? Just two of the members remained: Jésus Filardi (lead vocal, keyboard programming) and José Bautista (bass, keyboard programming). With the majority of the music composed by the latter, the two are helped by some pretty good musicians, amongst others Jean Pascal Bofo on guitar. The recordings took place between 2004 and 2007. Unlike some of the earlier albums, Calibrated Collision Course requires much more concentration of the listeners. It's not an album you would like to play as background music. Beforehand I must admit that I’m not fond of this kind of music and I have not enjoyed listening to it over and over again. For my taste the melodic essence of music suffers under all the arranging and numerous effects. Difficult rhythm patterns and the lack of melody doesn’t mean that it’s a bad album, on the contrary. The compositions are obviously well-thought over and delicately arranged and every voice, instrument and singing has its place. The entire album contains a strange mix of Steely Dan, Donald Fagen and a bit of Peter Gabriel. In Leap Of Faith some nice guitar solos can be heard by Javier De Las Heras as well as synth solos by Santiago Peréz. Most of the vocals by Filardi are rather spoken than sung. Calorie Street contains some evident jazz influences and impressive piano playing by Peréz. A beautiful symphonic opening of Press? Sure! is followed by a piece in the vein of an exotic Steely Dan. A number of fragments from American news bulletins are followed by the same kind of jazzy, ever changing music carried by keyboard programming and the multiple overdubbed voices of Filardi. An operatic voice joins Filardi in As Big As Bang, the most varied and ‘difficult’ track of the album. Next to the sounds of buzzing insects, there’s a melancholic piece with accordion and a really awesome piece of classical piano too. The final track Consumer Satisfaction is the most melodic one, again with some jazzy influences. Now I’ve found out how hard it is to write about an album full of contents you’re not familiar with. Although cleverly conceived and carefully produced, paying attention to every detail, one can hardly say that Filardi is a great singer. One can safely say there are some great musicians at work and the rest is a matter of taste. In my belief this is not an album that prog fans would appreciate except for the ones who favour Steely Dan music a lot. To rate this album would not do justice to Galadriel, because the rating would be influenced too much by my preference for more melodic music.