Canarios: Ciclos (1975)
Canarios (often called Los Canarios) was a rock band from Spain that managed to release some albums in the late ’60s and early ’70s during the Franco years. Around 1972, leader Teddy Bautista put a brief end of the band to do military service. After military service, he resurrected the band, with such a drastic change in sound, you won’t believe this was a band who once did songs like “Get On Your Knees”! That is to the prog rock sound. Meaning I’m certain the early stuff of the band couldn’t have been too different from what Los Bravos was doing (I hadn’t hear Canarios’ early material), so after a three year break, it’s unbelievable how much Canarios changed between albums! The band at this point consisted of Teddy Bautista himself on keyboards and vocals, Alain Richard on drums, guitarist Antonio Garcia de Diego, Mathias Sanvellian on additional keyboards, and Christian Mellies on bass, with female soprano vocals from Indonesian-born Rudmini Sukmawati.
Ciclos is this album, released on Ariola, and known outside of Spain as Cycles. This is a full-on prog rock taking of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Let me tell you this is hardly a straight take on Vivaldi, as the band does plenty of their own artistic creativity, after all, only they would get away with experimenting with blues, electronic and even barbershop quartet in the occasional passages. The album is loaded with lots of great analog synths (Moog, ARP 2600) as well as Mellotron. Vocal quality really varies greatly. Teddy Bautista, for example is better off not trying to sing, while Rudmini Sukmawati is much more suitable for the task, given her classical training. Much of the vocals are in English, although there are some Spanish and Latin vocals. This album is extremely complex and elaborate, and so much stuff going on you’ll be listening to lots of times to get it, but you can see after a few listens why this is regarded as one of the greats of prog rock from Spain! You’ll hear the familiar Vivaldi themes, but packed with synths and Mellotron, and in between the band’s own creative stamp. The occasional flirting with flamenco comes to show the band’s Spanish roots for everyone. Of course classical purists would simply stay the hell away from this album. I hear tons of comparisons to the Italian group Il Rovescio Della Medaglia (RDM), since they also did a prog rock adaptation of classical on their classic album Contaminazione (1973), only they took on Bach, rather than Vivaldi. If you’re a fan of Contaminazione, of course you’ll need Ciclos. Whoever thinks prog rock bands have no sense of humor should get a kick of the end part of “Tercer Acto: Ciudad Futura”, where after some great proggy guitar lead solos, the band suddenly breaks into barbershop singing about a “plastic Christmas”.
By the way, I have never been a fan of straight-up classical music, played the traditional way with orchestra, so it’s nice to see bands like RDM and Canarios (not to mention Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Ekseption, both groups that you know you either like them or don’t) do their prog takes on classical music making making me aware of this music. I’ve never heard The Four Seasons as originally intended, but I do hear some familiar themes on Ciclos, and I know a lot of it was their own ideas too.
Taking on a classical work in a prog rock context could end up as a disaster, but instead they shined on their take on Vivaldi.
Really, this album is certain to grow on you, and although a few iffy vocals, it’s certainly one of the finest prog rock takes on classical music! The analog synths and Mellotrons are certain to kill for, as well!