Home Artist links Label link

Humus - Tus Oidos Mienten

Artist:	Humus
Title:	Tus Oidos Mienten
Label:	Smogless records 2008
Length(s):	36 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1992
Month of review:	09/1996

Line up

Jorge Beltran - just about everything
Some help from James Zeus Alberto.
This is a rerelease from 1992, Smogless 2006.

Tracks

1)	Tus Oidos Mienten	5.36
2)	Ateneus	1.00
3)	Los Freaks De James	4.59
4)	Plasma Costeno	6.27
5)	Dragones Nocturnos	2.56
6)	Alas Despojadas	1.01
7)	Smogless 240	3.50
8)	Restauracion	10.11

Summary

Well, what DO I know about them......nothing, so might as well start now.

The music

After only a little while it becomes apparent what the overall style of this album is like: although it starts with some dissonant playing on the keyboard with weird sounds and all, this album is in the progressive rock style in the stronger sense. This means, a little melody and lots of (hard) rock. This pushes it easily into the direction of the neo-psychedelic bands like Outskirts of Infinity and maybe even Bevis Frond or the older Hawkwind or to comparison with bands like Clear Blue Sky or Freedom. Also some excursions are made into the realm of jazz (title track) and blues.

The lack of melody, well not really the lack, but they are obscured by the instrumentation, makes this a hard album to get into and to be honest at first I found it a little to free-style with too little structure and sometimes that works out right. In this case it took me some time to listen around all the cliche riffs that sometimes pass by and get into the album appreciating the melody and the power behind some of the instrumentals, especially the guitar parts. Still, the album has some weak points for instance in Los Freaks the James, which has an irritating standard riff.

Throughout the percussion is interesting and tends to fire onthe music and the guitar playing is passionate, at times very fast and usually quite noisy and distorted. A good example of the lengths these people go to is Smogless 350, which stands out because of its lack of compromises. Very subtle melodic guitar is interlaced with some terrifying, raunchy guitarsolos.

The long closer Restauracion is not so heavy, but rather repetitive with a larger role for the synthesizer. Here the band evokes the beeping side of Hawkwind. The melody is often repeated, the track not being vey varied. On the whole a little laid back especially in comparison with earlier tracks and it ends up being one long meandering guitar solo.

Conclusion

Taking the heavy rock of a number of begin 70 psychedelic rock bands a little further, hard and sharp guitar playing with an occassional breather, but on the whole rather noisy and unstructured. Best tracks are the title track, Plasma Costeno and Smogless 240. As such about half of the album is good, while the rest can be a little boring at times. Nice stuff but, be sure you're into this kind of music.