Lento juego de luces (Espiritu, 1982)

Coming from "Espiritu III", maybe not Espiritu's best effort, this is an uncommon and fascinating track. It is a rather long one (more than 7 minutes) and includes a remarkable sung melody, supported by spacey instrumentals (and a long finale) maily driven by the piano, the bass guitar and assorted keyboards. The sound of the '80s is there, but the well built architecture of "Lento juego de luces" ("Slow light effects" in English) strongly belongs to the previous decade.

"Espiritu III" was, of course, the third studio album by the band.

 

These Argentinian musicians know how to write and arrange good songs and always try to skip trivial solutions, even if their music never goes experimental. That's what you'll fine here: an enjoyable track suspended between prog, pop and electronic easy listening, a song that can dig its way inside the listener's soul. That's all I can expect of a prog song.

La casa de la mente (Espiritu, 1975)

There's more good in Argentina you can imagine, old and new prog, I mean. This track, for example, is the opening one of Espiritu's first album, "Crisálida", released in 1975. The song begins with a long, atmospheric, almost spacey keyoard intro, then a devilish electric guitar comes in and the tempo jumps up. Soon after, here's the sung section (in Spanih), accompanied by acoustic guitars and some piano effects.

This cover reminds me of some American SF magazines of old.

It's a lively ballad with a 2 minutes central instrumental interlude including good guitar / keyboard interplays and a choral touch. There's a strong taste of the '70s in "La casa de la mente" (meaning "Mind's Home"), but the sound is rather original, close maybe to some Italian bands like PFM, but with its own distincive feel. I recommend this song to anyone liking rich, diversified and well balanced compositions. Like me.