Instrumental
International relevance: *
Latecomers to the A-Disc roster,
Mantra's debut album showed more than a few commercial leanings
towards the radio friendly pop rock of the day as well as dehydrated
funk fusion and disco. One track, ”Swing Your Thing” suspiciously
shares a few features with Toto's ”Hold The Line” which is
revealing enough. ”I Sold My Soul (To Rock 'n' Roll?)” is – with
a question mark or without it – one of the worst over-used song
titles ever. It doesn't matter that it's probably used here as a tongue-in-cheek hint at the slight hard rock
charasteristics sneaking into what's basically a mediocre jazz fusion
track. Guitarist, songwriter and arranger Henrik Janson obviously had
a taste for American FM hard rock, as his playing is soaked with it.
The album is entirely instrumental, but whether that's for the better
or for the worse is impossible to say since ”Take It” sucks
harder than an anabolic Hoover anyway.
Mantra had a few 45s
out and released their second album ”Mantraction” on the Hill
label in 1982 before Janson turned to a prolific career as a studio
guitarist. He was also a member of Mikael Ramel's backing band Harru
Lust in the early 80s (appearing on ”Strömavbrott” from 1982 and
”Bra sak” from 1984), and Ramel also wrote the lyrics for one of
Mantra's songs on ”Mantraction”.
Balladtime
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