The Quests - Instrumentally Yours

The Quests are one of Singapore's biggest instrumental groups in the same way that America had the Ventures and, more appropriately in this case, England had the Shadows. While it might be somewhat surprising to hear, given the paltry amount of far east rock & roll that found its way to English-speaking culture, they were hardly alone (see The Swallows). The big influence that could be heard in nearly all of it was the Shadows. For instance, here's an earlier Quests single (there's better quality versions out there, but they don't allow embedding).

However, the selections on Instrumentally Yours come a bit later and, like many instrumental groups later in their career, they've worked in some pretty serious fuzz, Davie Allan style and a bit of psychedelic influence.

The Indian Maid

Return of Spring

Sayonara

Why Go To the Temple

The Diablos - El Bandito / Hombre

These are some pretty fun latin-ish instrumentals arranged by Joe Negroni of Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers (not able to dig anything up on the rest of the credits). El Bandito appears to be the A side despite being more or less a throwaway, clocking in at only one minute and 40 seconds. However, "Hombre" is the scorcher here, mixing the goofy muted cornets (not sure about that, they almost sound like a vocal imitation of a trumpet) with some absolutely beautiful heavily reverbed guitar.

El Bandito


Hombre


It appears this might have had a Spanish release with a picture cover afterward (the Jubilee disc was released in 1966, this references 1967)