Manuale Dragon Professional

Little Dragon—the pioneering Swedish four-piece fronted by enigmatic vocalist Yukimi Nagano, with multi-instrumentalists Håkan Wirenstarnd and Fredrik Wallin on keyboards and bass respectively and Erik Bodin on drums and percussion—return with their sixth studio album, “New Me, Same Us".

Dragon formed in Auckland, New Zealand, in January 1972 with a line-up that featured Todd Hunter on bass guitar, guitarist Ray Goodwin, drummer Neil Reynolds and singer/pianist Graeme Collins. All had been in various short-lived bands in Auckland, Collins is credited with using I Ching to provide the name Dragon…

Kiwi rock decadents Dragon's third album appeared in 1977 produced by Peter Dawkins, who tamed the verbose progressive rock sound of earlier efforts into an equally lurid pub rock sound. While their new approach took them chartwards and created one of the more extreme biographical histories in rock, the albums remain timepieces of a dark and decadent era for New Zealand rock probably best kept under the carpet…

New Zealand band that started out as a jammy prog rock outfit emigrated to Australia around 1975 and transformed into a successful top 40 mainstream pop band. This is the Aussie "O Zambezi" Lp (The U.S. version is called "Are You Old Enough" with the bonus of an earlier (1977) big hit in Oz "April Sun In Cuba" and mixed up added/deleted tracks and sequence)…

Prototypical 70's Belgian band, Dragon's music falls mostly in the hard progressive category with a psychy edge. For all the adepts of delicate and elaborated rock, this band displays a great richness, a great instrumental diversity (Mellotron, guitar, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, etc.) with some lightened guitar soli. They sound like a mix of Iron Butterfly, Uriah Heep, Van Der Graaf Generator, and 70s Italian Art Rock.