Fans of the Canterbury scene should thank
Planeta Imaginario, and specifically the band's keyboardist, Marc Capel, for resurrecting sounds thought lost, as they say, to the dustbin of history. Way back in the '60s and '70s, British bands like
Soft Machine,
Egg, and
Hatfield and the North melded jazz and prog into a jazz-rock hybrid that was long on inventiveness and thankfully short on pomposity, but was nonetheless swept away along with the more grandiose aspects of prog by the advent of punk. Some old Canterbury warriors are still playing today, others have sadly passed on, and now and then a new batch of young musicians takes inspiration from
the Softs et al. -- including this Spanish group appearing on its second Cuneiform album,
Optical Delusions, in 2011. The Canterbury sensibility is immediately evident on the first track, "Collective Action," with Capel's electric piano voicings echoing Dave Stewart's work with
the Hatfields. But there is much more: on this disc
Planeta Imaginario are a sextet of keyboards (Capel), fretless bass (Dimitris Bikos), and drums (Vasco Trilla Gomes dos Santos) augmented by a three-piece horn section (trumpet, trombone, and saxophones) plus four guest musicians on assorted brass and reeds. So while Capel's keys first recall Stewart in
the Hatfields, and then Stewart again in his pre-
Hatfields trio
Egg, and even a bit of Alan Gowen from
Gilgamesh, those horns and reeds announce themselves in alternately breezy and incisive arrangements (also courtesy of Capel) that suffuse the album with a jazzy "little big band" feel. Think of
Soft Machine's short-lived 1969 septet incarnation with its four-piece horn/reed section -- or even some hints of
Zappa in the horn charts of the concise and funked-up "Hemangloma." But for the most part,
Optical Delusions seems firmly ensconced in the world of Canterbury and related groups. "The Garden of Happy Cows" (with strong sax solos over heated extended grooves) features some squelchy synth suggesting
Gong's switch doctor
Tim Blake circa
You, a connection made even more clearly during the piece's spaced-out keyboard ostinato conclusion, which segues into the free-form intro of "Xarramandusca," with Alfonso Muñoz firmly in
Elton Dean territory on soprano sax. Later in the track a bit of very Mike Ratledge-esque wah-wah organ appears, a seeming homage to the granddaddy of Canterbury keyboardists, although perhaps most impressive of all are the burning organ tones Capel employs on driving solos in the aforementioned "Garden" and the album-concluding "The Sea...and Later the Sun...and the Reflection," very much in the mold of
Dave Sinclair's workouts on the extended jams of
Caravan (and the quite nice flute and sax on the latter track sounds very much like Jimmy Hastings).
Optical Delusions' retro-progressive (how's that for an oxymoron?) keyboard voicings are rare in this type of jazz-rock context -- even in today's
Soft Machine "legacy" groups -- and their presence here is cause for celebration. ~ Dave Lynch