Praise for Guapo‘s History Of The Visitation from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: If you asked us (do it!) to recommend you a good modern day “prog rock” band, Guapo would be at the top of the list, which would be obvious if you’ve seen our many, many reviews of the fantastically proggy output of this long running British unit, who have released albums on such labels as Cuneiform, Ipecac, tUMULt, Neurot, and now Cuneiform again.
Guapo - History Of The Visitation
Their all-instrumental excursions into the epic outer reaches of compositional complexity and dark moodiness certainly owe something to the ’70s prog greats but don’t really come off as “retro” the way, like, Astra does (though that’s fine with us too). Also their inspirations aren’t just the more popular groups like Yes and King Crimson, they’re probably more informed by the likes of Magma and Univers Zero.
With History Of The Visitation, Guapo‘s first album since 2008, the band’s current lineup – featuring founding member and drummer extraordinare David Smith, along with three other gents, some of whom have also played in Cardiacs and Chrome Hoof, on guitar, bass, and keyboards, PLUS bunch of guests on violin, oboe, bassoon, French horn and other fancy instruments – continue to indulge in the epic, cinematic, somewhat sinister sounds that we love ‘em for.
Case in point, the album’s opening track, a five-part suite called ‘The Pilman Radiant’, at over 26 minutes commandeering a good half of the disc. An entire vinyl side in fact, which does the long slow build up from sedate and somber, sorta 20th century classical hiss / drone atmospherics, to a lumbering melodiousness, to full-on jazzed-up soloing, getting pretty darn convoluted before it’s over, making for a powerful prog statement all right. Whew. Could almost be a Stinking Lizaveta song, stretched to, like, ten times ordinary length, with keyboards and effective soundtracky bits added in.
The remaining two tracks here (side two of the vinyl) make similar, but somewhat more concise statements. ‘Complex #7′ is relatively brief and ambient at under 5 minutes, and then there’s the over 11 minute ‘Tremors From The Future’, the later being a repetitive, rhythmically complex hypno-prog jam with plenty of muscle.
As mentioned, Cuneiform has released this on both CD and vinyl. Both formats come with a bonus DVD featuring live footage of Guapo on stage at two festivals – NEARfest 2006 in Pennsylvania and RIO 2007 in France, when Daniel O’Sullivan (of Aethenor, Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses, Grumbling Fur, Ulver, etc.) was still in the band. That artists like Magma and Keith Emerson also appeared at those shows should tell you something.
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Originally Posted by JAMOOL
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