Humus - Tus Oidos Mienten (1992)

Artista: Humus

Álbum: Tus Oidos Mienten
Año: 1992
Género: Rock Progresivo / Rock Psicodelico
Duración: 36:00
Nacionalidad: México

Lista de Temas:
1. Tus Oídos Mienten
2. Ateneus
3. Los Freaks De James
4. Plasma Costeño
5. Dragones Nocturnos
6. Alas Despojadas
7. Smogless 240
8. Restauración

Alineación:
- Jorge Beltrán / Guitarras, bajo, teclados, batería y percusiones

Seguimos con la lista de aportes de amigos, seguimos con Humus gracias a los links de José Zovek Herrera Jimenez desde México, en el primer disco de la banda liderada por Jorge Beltrán. Demás está decir que es prácticamente imposible encontrar estos CDs en formato físico, al menos tratamos de remediar en parte ese problema y hacemos revivir este disco descatalogado en el blog cabezón.

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.

Jurriaan Hage

Y traigo lo poco que encontré en inglés...

The magnific Jorge Beltrán show his debut album (like Humus) "Tus Oidos Mienten" making all the sounds, and playing all the instruments. the album was published in 1992 and had an amazing Psychedelic/Space Rock style very similar to the classic bands of the genre (Eloy, Pink Floyd, Nektar, Os Mutantes or Ozric Tentacles) but with a personal style very mexican (had to say). the classic prog rock bands made in Mexico like Decibel, Chac Mool and of course Humus, makes me feel so proud, because i'm a hugh fan of all the prog rock all over the world, and the feeling of know that bands like this were made here in my country, and maybe not in the same level of the eropean prog rock bands like Pink Floyd, Magma, King Crimson or Jethro Tull, but this guys really makes history in the story of the prog rock, in the story of the mexican and latin rock and that's because "Tus Oidos Mienten", is a fabulous example of the genious that the mexican composers may have. the track called "Plasma Coste'o" it's really my favourite, the guitar makes me remember "Tubular Bells" of Mike Oldfield (in a couple of ocassions of course), with the tiny bells on the bottom. other groovy tracks in the album are "Tus Oidos Mienten" and "Dragones Nocturnos" (i recomend that pieces). if you already know this band, you know what i'm talking about.

Saúl Glikowski