Aka
Reflection
A while ago their first album "Do what you like" from 1970 made a crash landing on my desk and is a great and joyful thing to listen to every once in a while. It combines earthy, heavily buzzing and fuzzed out rock monuments in the vein of the classic UK and US bands with a few tunes in the Continental European heavy rock style with big chorus lines and a bit of a pop feel to it thrown in for the good measure plus great melodic ballads and pop tunes in their native Indonesian language. It worked out from the start although both sides of the bands repertoire went into completely different directions. This is a trademark AKA carried on through their whole recording career it seems for now I hold their fifth effort "Reflection" from 1974 in my hands. A beautiful reissue and you can bet, it is just different melodies and titles but it is the same wild crossover of styles with a change between each and every song. Lush epic ballads, powerful heavy rock, a great beat tune with a flowery feel that drags you straight to the dancehall and another epic, yet utterly heavy blues rock and psyche freak out track make this a colorful album to spin in my stereo. For the time of its release most of the tunes in Western countries would have been already retrospective except for the heavy rockers but everything here comes well performed and executed with passion and the stuff away from the more accessible pop sound will definitely swallow your brain into a gorge of swirling colours. Fans of 60s US west coast dream pop who may stand heavier tunes and devoted music lovers who go for the classic 60s and early 70s sound will go nuts!