01 - Galatea's Guitar
02 - Half the Day is Night
03 - Song of Injured Love
04 - The Fortune Teller
05 - Fire Dance
06 - The Lady in the Moon
07 - Ferris Wheel
Cecily's Notes
Personal Background: My father gave me a copy of this CD to further my jazz edification. Thanks, Dad.
Resonance: This is a pretty album. There's a lot going on but its all happening very quietly, kind of like the inhabitants of a mystic swamp - there's your fireflies and fairy lights and crickets and a chorus of frogs and if you want to take your throw rug and matcha tea out to a handy stump and get started on your evening's meditation nothing will stop you but if you aren't very good at meditation then you'll start looking around and wishing for a glimpse of something bigger like a flamingo or an alligator. That would be cool. I guess this is my roundabout way of saying it doesn't really have that wow factor even though it is tremendously pretty. 2/5
Design: Can't fault it here. He covers Falla and Donovan and makes them sound the same. The percussion is marvelous. A thing of beauty, really. If only Gabor Szabo would indulge in a little healthy drama, get some rises and falls to take the listener on the journey promised by that cover... 4/5
Utility: Sometimes I want to listen to something low-key and when I do this is one of my first choices, right up there with Satie (though Satie is more emotionally accessible). It gets a lot of use around the house. 4/5
Best: 'Galatea's Guitar,' because the first five minutes in a mystic swamp are always gonna be the best.
Worst: Drawing a blank.
Conclusion: 10/15
Ticharu's Notes
Personal Background: I'd run across Gabor's playing on a Chico Hamilton disc. Great stuff, works amazingly well with Chico. So I saw this album cover on one of those streaming sites I was trying to use back in the day and gave it a go. Pretty interesting stuff but I don't believe I ever listened to the whole thing, now not being the time to rant about streaming services endless choice meaning I was constantly switching between the million and one things I've never heard and never listening to anything twice or even all the way through... so I hastily Amazon'd a copy of the CD to Cecily thinking I'd found something amazing.
Resonance: This is the only Gabor Szabo album I've listened to, several times now I have a copy, the others I've just sampled on YouTube and while they all have some great guitar playing on them, they all fall down with song selection. So far Dreams is the strongest along those lines but it's still kind of hard to pull any emotion from the music or form a very strong attachment to. Maybe it's the flaws that make it human and that's where I find the connection. 3/5
Design: Is "folk-jazz" a thing? That's how I'd describe this music. Covers a lot of stylistic ground very quickly, shifting sands, urban smooth, samba, medieval grunge, Spanish guitar, slightly rock and blues at times, psychedelic Dead Head jams and that's all in the opening track! It isn't your average jazz guitar trio. Dreams is like a vaguely Oriental dream-scape with strings and some lovely subtle percussion. There's little about it that screams of showy guitar which is good but it does lack any real edge. And then there are the "lounge" pieces. Lounge music without the kitsch factor is designed for what? A dentist office? 3/5
Utility: So... at it's worst you could play this album in a waiting room... at it's best you could play this album in an opium den... so the little room with my stereo occupies a middle ground somewhere between having your teeth worked on and being awake in your dream. 4/5
Best: The Fortune Teller, Galatea's Guitar
Worst: Song of Injured Love, Ferris Wheel
Conclusion: Dreams is possibly Gabor's best solo effort, I do find it interesting, and I will continue the quest for another Gabor Szabo album to add to the collection. 10/15
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