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Ripped BY: ChrisGoesRock
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After experimenting with British and American Psychedelic music they develloped their own brand of psychedelic rock The album comes in the original gatefold sleeve, which was actually originally the 2nd cover and is taken from the orignal mastertapes.

"Virgin" the first Traffic Sound album, especially since this is really true, by all means (and please don't search for tautologies in my reviews: this is just graffiti on the virtual PC walls of paper). There are seven progressive songs out of eight in all on "Virgin", and five of them are real progressive killers, especially with regard to the general situation about Progressive Rock at the Dawn of the Genre. Here are these progressive songs-masterpieces: Tell the World I'm Alive, Yellow Sea Days, Jews Caboose, Meshkalina, and Last Song (which actually is the only instrumental on the album). While all the first four of these songs (the fifth one Last Song is a special composition, so I'll specially be back to it a bit later).

These compositions are filled with all of the essential progressive ingredients and all of them (as well as the album's other songs, except track 11) were created within the frame of a unified, incredibly original stylistics, each of them, taken separately, has, however, some special characteristics of their own. And I especially appreciate the diversity that is placed in the album with a unified overall stylistics.) Tell the World I'm Alive, containing wonderful interplays between acoustic guitar and organ passages and solos of sax and bass, apart from other arrangements, is the only (of the said four tracks) that was performed without drums, and Manuel Sanguineti's always excellent performance on percussion is especially impressive here. The longest track Yellow Sea Days is the most progressive composition of "Virgin".

It contains a wide variety of diverse vocals (yes, an "early Peruvian" English is OK, as always) and instrumental arrangements with all electric and acoustic instruments in a game, a lot of heavy riffs, electric guitar and flute separate solos and unique trio-interplays between the sax solos and piano and acoustic / classical guitar passages. Also, this song is especially rich in complex time signatures, sudden changes of musical direction along with tempo, etc. Apart from the remarkable joint instrumental arrangements, Jews Caboos contains the most noticeable vibraphone solo as well as interplays between organ and vibe. Even if Jean Pierre Magnet wasn't the first multi-instrumentalist in the history of Rock music, he was the most talented one, at least. The work of the rhythm section is tight here, as always, while the varied percussives add new exotic colours to an overall musical palette.

The longest and most virtuosic solos of electric guitar are also on this track as well as interplay between them and strident sax solos. Meshkalina is the album's only composition where there are most of the solos and arrangements go uptempo to very fast. Classically, diverse, very interesting and original instrumental arrangements work each of the said four songs throughout, including all the vocal parts too (which is always especially impressive). The fifth outstanding track Last Song is the instrumental played only with an acoustic guitar. I was deeply impressed by Mr. Patron's classical mastery of playing this instrument as well as his compositional inventiveness. I am sure he was the first and only acoustic (classical!) guitar hero until Steve Howe joined Yes and played his acoustic piece for "The Album" in October of 1970.

(Regarding the compositional and performing quality, I regard the third "acoustic hero" Greg Lake who performed The Sage on ELP's first "(Mussorgsky's) Pictures At an Exhibition" live show in March of 1971. Note: I've heard parts of classical guitar played by a few other musicians in 1970, including Focus's Jan Akkerman, whose acoustic passages become, in my view, really excellent for the first time on the band's second album "Moving Waves".) The songs Virgin and Simple (tracks 7 & 12) sound progressive as well, and quite good, actually. There are complete acoustic.

Track listing
01. Virgin
02. Tell the World I'm Alive
03. Yellow Sea Days
04. Jews Caboose
05. A Place In Time
06. Simple
07. Meshkalina
08. Last Song