Sunday 16 July 2017

Santhiago. Gustavo - Animam (2016)


The debut album from this Brazilian artist.

Gustavo Santhiago did the keyboards and flutes here. He had help from a quintet who helped out with sitar, guitars, bass and drums.

This album created some shockwaves in ProgArchives and other places when it was released. It was considered to be one of the better 2016 albums. So I purchased this album and promptly forgot it until now.

Gustavo is a member of the fusion/eclectic prog trio Stratus Luna who has a pretty good following in Brazil. The music on Animam did not fit into the Stratus Luna concept so he released this album instead.

The music on this almost fifty minutes long album is symphonic prog. Instrumental symphonic prog. There are clear references to Camel here. Very clear references indeed. There is also some good Yes references here and also, not surprisingly, some good RPI references. Yes, Italian symphonic prog.

Gustavo Santhiago has by no means re-invented the wheel or even revolutionised the symphonic prog scene with this album. The music is unassuming traditional symphonic prog with some medieval classical music references.

But Gustavo does this very well and this album is one of the better instrumental symphonic prog albums I have ever had the fortune to encounter. This is inedeed a very good album which should be a must-have for those into this genre.

3.5 points

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