Trace - "Trace" [1974] @ 320 (upgrade)(Dutch Keyboard-Dominated Prog)

This post is filling a request for Pedro.

Listening to Trace's first album, it's like a war. Notes sprawling and tearing up your inner ear like bullets fired straight out of a smoking machine gun. Lightning Bach style, super tight bass/drum interplay. It's Emerson Lake & Palmer...but without the gigantic ego, the lyrical bullcorn and the awful by-product filler that every album's filled with.

Some bands are just TOO COMPETENT to write a page of history (and therefore, being understood) and Trace is one of the leaders in this sad but mind-boggling category maybe with Echolyn or Par Lindh Project. In fact, the product is purely an exercise, so it's not accessible and therefore, dispensable. In no way these guys thought they would carry on or reform one day on the sake of making a few dollars. This band probably made some money by doing marathon concerts. Hard working, not physically attractive (Rick van der Linden looks like an anorexic Leif Ericksson) and ridiculously perfectionist... dude, this record is tough to swallow and needs time to digest to full appreciation.

This is a major kick in Rachmaninov's...er, piano I guess.

Highly Recommended!

There is still a problem with the site that hosts the mini-players, hopefully we can straighten that out very soon and have the samples back!

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