FunkFreak75
MellotronStorm reviewed this album in November or December, proclaiming it to be his front-runner for Album of the Year, so I knew that I had to give it a serious chance. Despite being initially turned off by the opening song, I'm glad I did. This is definitely one of the most creative and complex albums I've encountered all year--and this with the loss of their former bass player! Well done!
1- "Folia Saxifraga" (4:27) opens with a full-frontal bang right into a fast-paced SEVEN IMPALE-like jam. Sax solo at 2"40 is clearly jazz while the organ and odd-tempo rhythm section beneath gets louder and more insistent. (So Seven Impale-ish!) A little too long in the extension of the repetitive sections and too dissonant from the sax. My bad. (8/10)
2- "Monodia" (6:38) opens with some really cool muted bass organ notes before bursting into a kind of VanDerGraffGenerator/SEVEN IMPALE sound--sax and all. After the long introductory period (almost two minutes) we settle into a off-beat organ-arpeggio-led section over which electric guitar solos. In the fourth minute organ does a little solo, too, before sax takes a turn. It's very cool when multiple horns and organ start playing a gorgeous jazz melody together. Amazing! Now THIS is progressive rock music as it should be! In the fifth minute things scale back to a kind of "Watcher in the Skies" fast-pulsing non-straight-time beat before things amp up with the whole band getting into a weave. Awesome song! One of the album's best! (9.75/10)
3- "Blue-S" (5:43) harkens back to some old blues rock styles and chord progressions from the 1960s--only with the trick of placing it all within an odd time signature--like "Peter Gunn" with a bluesier, off-tempo, more difficult composition. Not my favorite but kudos for creativity. (8.5/10)
4- "Shamash" (8:07) opens with more experimental sounds--this time crazily distorted and fast-echoed, slow decayed electric piano (!) chords. At the two minute mark the sound experiments end and we enter into another complex, odd-timed CRIMSONIAN song with distorted electric guitar and then distorted violin solos above the rhythm section though within the music. There is a lot of BLACK SABBATH/URIAH HEEP-like organ hidden deep within the sounds of these songs. The song shifts and the violin gets let loose--soaring and then returning to the fold, over and over again. This is awesome! Then, at 5:43, everything cuts away and the opening effect returns but modified slightly to comport the single-note play of the guitar. Then there is an odd fade out at 6:18 before the band returns en force with what feels and sounds like a completely different sound (and song!) (9/10)
5- "Idios Cosmos" (6:20) jazzy solo sax playing chromatic scaled arpeggi opens this one before alternating for the first minute with full band entries and exits. Then a spacey, almost MAHAVISHNU or NOVA-like spacey, all-instrument tuning and warming up section ensues. At 2:15 a new structure starts up, again KING CRIMSON is the only band I can compare this sound with as there are smooth elements contrasted with jagged, angular sounds and stylings, perhaps even playing in polyrhythms. The drumming here is really cool--beautiful cymbal sounds. At 4:05 there is yet another cut out, space out, and freak out before the sax begins to peak its head into the mix. It takes a full minute, however, for the space synths to be subdued by the sax. The final half minute is the full band playing together. Interesting. I understand conceptually and technically what they are doing. I'm just not as fond of this for a "repeat/replay" song. (8.5/10)
6- "E verde è l'ignoto su cui corri" (7:15) guitar and organ take turns laying down some nice, delicate arpeggi with some interspersal of light drums and bass (from the organ and guitar) before female vocals enter (singing in English--in a kind of ELAINE DI FALCO way). Against a pretty weave of picked acoustic and electric guitars Patrizia's voice is multi-tracked within the non-standard scale GENESIS-like guitar picking weave. Enter electric piano-sounding organ and we have a gorgeous classic GENESIS-like weave. Truly beautiful in a tributional though entirely original way. And it's extended for a nice length of time--to the end of the song! Wow! Was that unexpected and delightful! Definitely one of my top three songs for this album. (10/10)
7- "Marienkirche" (3:40) heavily treated/sound-manipulated bells, human voices, and percussives--perhaps even a looped treatment of a recording of some German church bells (I know there was a wonderful Marienkirche in München.) But wait! Isn't this the domain of fellow Italian sound engineer Stefano Musso?!?!?! (I love it!) (9/10)
8- "Di eccezione in variante" (7:23) opens with an electric guitar arpeggio played against its own echo before drums and Fender Rhodes and organ join in. At 1:10 the rest of the band gels into a cohesive unit around the separately established melody lines (polyphonic?) of the guitar, organ bass line, and drums. Then, in the third minute, a new way of expressing the weave congeals into a collective weave--all members performing within the same universe. At 3:38 the heavily distorted sax-sounding electric guitar wails into the scene above rhythm section and organ. This goes on for a full minute before things take a turn and then shut down. Empty space is filled by the electric piano starting up its melody line, all by itself, before the rest of the band joins in with a heaviness provided by sax and electric guitar power chords. Again, these are not your typical melody chords, they are chromatic in the typical YUGEN and KING CRIMSON fashion. (9/10)
9- "Usil" (6:38) another wonderfully keyboard-based song of odd tempos which lets the alto sax and baritone sax bass lines create the melody for the first two minutes. Electric piano chords signal an upcoming shift, eased by the disappearance of the sax and bass organ arpeggi. Guitar and electric piano take over the lead weave before dual sax lines and organ re-enter and take it back. At 3:33 there is a settling into a rhythm with some nice electric piano support chords while the alto sax takes off in a true jazz improvisational solo. At 4:30, things cut again while a slow weave of cymbals, spacey sax and guitar play our over a base of steady electric piano arpeggi. (9/10)
10- "Eros vs Anteros" (10:02) opens with a little Latin/Spanish/Santana-like melody riff played repeatedly for the first 30 seconds before a little lull allows the entrance and rise of a low-end Moog-like synth bass line to establish itself in the foreground. Soloing electric guitar wails away during most of this while the flangey bass synth seems to keep drawing my attention. I expect to find some African American bass player from the 1970s credited with this bass synth play. The guitar solo is long and at times unexceptional but gets stronger by the end. At 3:25 things shift dramatically leaving a JC Superstar-like arpeggiated bass line to lead us through a long swirling organ solo. Actually quite an awesome section. This continues till 5:50 when things shift, almost feeling like an intro to a 60s rock song, before the band returns to another variation of the original Latin melody riff. This allows a window for the drummer to show off his creative chops until 7:50. The next section has a kind of "White Rabbit" melody-chord progression to it. The final minute is left to a lone soloing steel-string acoustic guitar. Kind of Ry Cooder-like. Great stuff. Very creative. One of the best prog epics of 2017! (10/10)
11- "Il violato intatto" (7:08) opens with fast-paced electric piano arpeggio repeated over and over while bass pedals, organ and guitar eventually creep into the mix. When the piano eventually shifts its octave and doubles up, the rest of the band fades out and then comes back with a different weave. In the fourth minute an old-sounding synthesizer joins in and plays some subtle soloing over the course of the next minute. Ominous, heavy group play beneath the electric piano fills out ninety seconds of the final two minutes, while solo sax plays alone, against its echoed self, for the final 30 seconds. A top three song for me. (9.5/10)
Five stars; a masterpiece of complex, boundary-pushing progressive rock music--the goal that all progressive rock musicians should strive for.
