La Otracina - The Aquarian Wind (Vinyl LP)

Hot damn! I picked this La Otracina one out as my first victim of the day on account of it having the coolest looking sleeve on the reviews pile. That's just how I roll. Anyway, slap your needle down on it and it's prog! Proper '70s-style rock heroics with clean bass and quite dry-sounding drums driving King Crimson-esque chunks of heavy riffing while overdriven guitar heroics splooge all over it in the heavy parts and twinkle and shimmer when they take it down. There's a good mix here of old fashioned riff-wizardry and more out-there atmospherics, and even an eastern-sounding bit with tambourine and sinewy guitar lines that's got those mystical vibes you get from Grails when they hit a groove. There's that kind of Led Zeppelin-gone-mathy feel that you get from Pearls & Brass in places too. And the singer totally sounds like Ozzy in the Sabbath-esque closing rocker 'Forgotten To Be Free'. I'm totally enjoying this, actually. Gonna have to delve into their back catalogue later when I don't have a load of reviews to write. It's only one-sided but there's five decent-sized songs on there so it's a fairly lengthy side. Great to see so much fun and interesting new psych and prog coming in lately!