Automatic Fine Tuning - A.F.T. 1976

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Automatic Fine Tuning - A.F.T. 1976

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Automatic Fine Tuning - A.F.T. 1976
Progressive Rock
MP3 | 256 kbps | 71 MB |1976 | Front Cover | ZIP
Charisma Records CAS 1122

About this band A.F.T. I know very little. And there's not much info available anywhere about them. But I do like their one and only album called "Automatic Fine Tuning". It's a monster when it comes to guitar albums from the seventies. I've heard people say it's almost too much guitars here. How come, you may ask? Is it possible for us guitar freaks to get to much guitar??! A.F.T. was a quartet who played instrumental (not quite, there's vocal on the last track on the record) complex progressive rock. So what?! A lot of bands did that. But where other bands played rhythm guitar and solo guitar, A.F.T. played solo guitar, solo guitar and more solo guitar! That's why they sounded like no other band I've heard. The album has only four tracks, where two of them are over fourteen and fifteen minutes long. The first one opens the album and is the first part of a long suite called "The Great Panjandrum Wheel". Bassist Trevor Darks opens the track with a sound on his bass very much like a Rickenbacker before a distant guitar comes creeping in. Drummer Dave Ball starts up nice and easy before another guitar comes in and a guitar Hell breaks loose! From then on you got a lot of counterpoints, tempo-changes and varied guitar sounds. Wah-wah pedals and fuzz-boxes are hard-working here, believe me. It's all well arranged with a lot of power on the border of nearly getting tiresome. Both guitarists Paul A. McDonnell and Robert Cross plays like their lives were depending on it, soloing and riffing all the time, in different ways making the sound complex but not without melody and emotion. But the main expression on the album is more powerful and almost sinister at times, than it's mellow if you get the idea. Both guitarists are without doubt well skilled, capable of creating exciting sounds almost like a keyboard and strings at times. I guess using a bow like Jimmy Page are used here as well to create the string effect we hear on the second part of "The Great Panjandrum Wheel". This is quite a unique album, which will appeal to all guitar perverts (like myself) with an understanding of what progressive rock is all about. But be warned, there's extremely much guitar here, tons and tons of it, demanding to get your attention. So for the sake of domestic peace, play it when you are all by yourself (or with the company of other guitar perverts), but then again LOUD! Review by