Tuesday 23 January 2018

On The Raw - Big City Awakes (2017)


The debut album from this Spanish band.

On The Raw is a quintet with a lineup of saxophone, flutes, bass, drums, keyboards and guitars.
The band has got help from five vocalists who forms a choir.

This band may be new. It is though a band full of veterans in the scene. They comes from bands like Harvest, Dracma and Applessmellscolour.

The bands they comes from is mainly neo-prog bands. That is exactly what On The Raw and this album is not.

What we get here is a warm and nice serving of fusion. Mostly instrumental fusion with influences from local folk music and jazz. The band is clearly inspired by the Spanish jazz scene from the 1970s and the 1980s. They are clearly inspired by the folk and prog rock scene from those decades too.

The saxophones is clearly driving the music forward. These tones has a very melodic, warm feel. And melodic is the keyword for this album.

This album has this nice balance between edgy and melodic. There is a lot of interesting details here, a guitar solo here and there, some quirky keyboards and bass..... and a lot of melodies. I would not mind driving through a Spanish landscape with this music on the car stereo.

This is indeed a good album and one of the better brand new instrumental fusion and prog albums I have heard for a while. Check out this album.

3 points



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