Las Pesadillas—QUANTUM IMMORTALITY (2004)

Review by Irfan Hidayatullah

Assigned by Dominic Linde

I haven’t got any information for the band except for two things: 1) the band describes their music as “punk-gypsy-spaghetti-surf-rock” and indeed they sound exactly just like that, and 2) they did a cover of Super Mario Bros’ “Overworld Theme” which is fun!

Apart from that, the band pretty much lives on its description, and much more. The good news is for supposedly “jokey” nature of their music, they spend enough time and effort to craft their song into something worthwhile. The tracklist here is pretty endless, divided by shorter tracks and few longer ones, with three short interludes thrown in for good measure.

Discussing tracks here is pretty difficult, to put it short, every tracks on here provides something to hold your attention to, be it martial/music hall-ish rhythm of “Seven Shades of Winter”, paranoid driving riff battling with synths on “Girls Running from Bullets”, tempo changes in “Il Bacio”, hilarious latin rhythm of “The Woman in Question”, and so on, to name a few. Note the relatively huge styles they’re throwing in—surf guitars, punk rock chainsaw buzz, a few bluesy licks here and there, music hall, martial rhythms, lullabies, etc. Songwriting is generally good throughout. Some songs are more memorable than others, and some of the longer tracks doesn’t hold my attention throughout, but overall there are enough musical ideas to warrant excitement.

Minor drawbacks, apart from the longer tracks, is the singers—not exactly bad, not exactly good, not too emotional, just kinda ‘eh’. In fact, emotional resonance is not the word I would associate with this album—except for the some of the crushing moments near the end (the second part of “Schadenfreude”). But these are minor nitpicks and does not significantly detracts my enjoyment for the album.

MUMIY TROLL – Morskaya (1997)

Review by: Irfan Hidayatullah
Album Assigned by: Dina Levina 

This is a weird, weird album (or at least kinda weird-sounding–for a pop album, that is). I have never subjected myself to more than one listen, but here goes my thoughts anyway.

The band did certainly make their way to make this album sound interesting, different, or whatever it is–there’s an unconventional chord changes here and there, there’s a crazy sounding keyboard/synthesizers, and the singer guy sings in a rather unconventional way, adopting a slightly vaudevillian (?) attitude. The band also insert a hook for every now and then–they certainly know how to draw the listener’s attention. There’s an attempt to diversify their songs too–unfortunately, in the end the album still does nothing for me. For the starter, the album feels deadly long–even though it clocks at 48 minutes in 14 songs, it feels like it should have been shorter. Maybe that’s because the lack of fresh musical ideas. (At sixth songs or so, I feel enough already, even though I’m getting used to their sound). The lack of musical ideas also means that in the end you’ll have a hard time distinguishing the songs, although the first six songs are quite, uh, tolerable.

Of course, the impression might be improved on subsequent listens.

YES – Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973)

Review by: Jonathan Moss
Assigned by: Irfan Hidayatullah

 

This is without a doubt one of the best albums Yes have ever done. Easily top five, perhaps top three. Definitely in the pantheon of top prog albums in general. God, its such a fucking good album. Why? The whole package man, its got almost everything that makes Yes good (it is missing one rather crucial element, which should be obvious to Yes fans). Jon Anderson’s esoteric religious lyrics, his bizarrely high pitched but melodically pleasing and strangely friendly vocals, Chris Squire’s thick, busy and catchy bass lines, Steve Howe’s acidic, hooky guitar playing, Rick Wakeman’s ear grabbing, rich keyboard textures and symphonic playing (though at points he does seem to cross into cheesy sci-fi territory, but that gives the album a goofy charm rather than diminishing it in any serious way), and last but certainly not least, co-producer Eddie Offord, who manages to get a nice, clear separation between the instruments. Oh, and Alan White’s competent drumming.

Of course, this album does have a reputation for pretension, and at eighty minutes with four songs, I can’t really argue with that. However, I will argue that there’s nothing entirely wrong with being pretentious. Obviously it can result in a lot of pretty crappy music, but so can music that’s lacking in pretension, like most modern indie bands. So I guess I would call this album an example of successful pretentious music.

Besides, the album manages not to be monotonous through a variety of ways. For one, the four songs all have a different mood from each other, and within those songs there are different moods, and different sections, like an experimental novel written by multiple people, but with a similar vision. It helps, that as Mark Prindle pointed out, the album is not particularly bombastic. All the songs are pretty, and they generally sound too mystical and withdrawn to get extroverted, as bombastic music requires. I swear, if he’d been born later, Jon Anderson would have been a great neofolk artist. And Rick Wakeman would be a synthpop legend!

The way the instruments intertwine is amazing as well, it shows something of a lack of ego in the band, because although the instruments all get their own moments and in general sound fantastic, they work together beautifully at all times, never fighting for supremacy. In this regard they are like a good team of improvisatory comedians (this comparison will definitely be used sardonically).

On to the songs now! It starts off with “The Revealing Science of God”, which is definitely my favourite song on the album. It starts off with these mysterious ambient sounds, then starts to build in intensity, as Jon chants his lyrics, before the bass joins in and launches into a fantastic melody along with a majestic mellotron line from Wakeman. The song just has such a sense of joy to it, it sounds like celebration music for some esoteric religious party. Steve’s guitar playing is clean and melodic, almost byrdsy, but with a jazzy edge. It’s amazing how much the band can get out the beginning, just Jon’s angelic “what happened to wonders we once knew so well” bit, the bouncy guitar, catchy as fuck guitar and heavenly synth. This launches on to a tenser, more hard rocking bit, with aggressive but tuneful guitar playing and an uncertain vocal melody from Jon. And then! A very pretty synth bit, the song can’t stay tense, its just too jolly! It does become more chilled out though, kind of back to the proto-ambient vibe. For a prog epic its not that similar to something like Supper’s Ready, its more like “Close to the Edge”, it has different sections, but it always returns to the same themes. Of course, each times with variations, like a different riff or a frantic piano bit. Layer it more and keep it interesting and multifaceted while following the same melody, which is good, because what a fucking melody it is. Steve gets a very weird guitar solo as well, it becomes more pretty and conventional, but at the beginning it sounds almost like something that could be used in an artsier new wave song as a goofy sound effect. This leads to the “young christians see it” bit, which has an epic and of course, religious vibe, with some mellow synth playing. The song ends on a bouncy, joyous note, with spastic keyboard and bass, before getting more mellow, with dramatic singing from Jon, before returning triumphantly to the central melody.

The next song, “The Remembering”, opens with pretty swirly keyboards. The atmosphere of the song is mellow and lush, this is aided by Steve Howe’s hypnotic guitar line. This gives the song a sleepy energy, like animals napping in a humid jungle. This is followed by an ominous keyboard line and a more energetic bit. The guitar line is poppy and the bass is smooth. Then there is what I regard as the best bit in the song, because during it the percussion is actually punchy! Alan White temporarily stops being shite. Of course, the chiming acoustic guitar helps as well. It reminds me of The Wicker Man, only if it hadn’t been a horror film. The song ends on a cool celestial section, with beautiful guitar and choir like mellotron. The song can get repetitive within its structure but, along no Revealing Science, it is still a very strong song, though not quite a classic.

Admittedly, “The Ancient” is pretty bad. The song has its moments, like a pretty folk pop bit near the end, which could almost pass as its own song, and some interesting noises. But outside of this it has some of the ugliest guitar playing Steve Howe has done on record, just a kind of squealing atonal mess. The percussion doesn’t work either, it is overly busy. It’s just a very formless, confused song. It’s like they tried to go from prog to outright avant-garde. Leave that to Crimson, guys. The noises, for me make me conceptualise it as a kind of proto-Gates of Delirium, even if they don’t actually sound much alike. Ultimately it just sounds like video game music for some forgettable 90s game.

Luckily the song ends with an absolute classic, and the second best song on the album. This is of course “Ritual”. The best bit of the song is the “nous somme du soleil” chant. This occurs twice, relatively early in the song, featuring the beautiful chant of that title from Jon, under carefree, sweeping guitar and catchy bass. It creates this religious atmosphere, but one of joy, like a charismatic Church, but not at all! It’s reprised again at the end, but this time it’s more mellow, with otherworldly tinkling piano. These sections are for me definitely the highlight of the song, they convey something I cannot put to words, a spectral beauty. Something life affirming. However, if the rest of the song was junk, it would still be filler, so luckily the rest of the song is pretty great. Throughout it features various pretty vocal performances from Jon, pretty guitar leads and riffs (including at one point a nice punchy riff) from Steve and Squire’s catchy bass playing. There is also a good hard rocking bit, though it still retains the fundamental optimism of the tune. The song is a beautiful epic mantra, just not as quite as realised as revealing science.

Jesus, look how long this review is. Now I understand why critics hated prog so much, it is hard to review succinctly, unlike a punk song where you can just say “catchy aggressive guitar riff and sneering vocals”. Well, that doesn’t change that this album is great, even if one of the songs blows and it does suffer from padding. The classics make up for it!

JETHRO TULL – Aqualung (1971)

Review by: Irfan Hidayatullah
Album assigned by: Victor Guimarães

A must for every prog lover. But I guess you know it already.

That seems to be the general critics’ assessment for this album, although frankly, apart from the title track or “My God” these songs are not really prog, at least not in my opinion — most of them are hard rock/folk rock with medieval styling, and somewhat unconventional chord progressions. (Maybe that’s what they meant by “prog”?) What they did may seem simple on paper, marrying hard rock with folk/medieval motives, but nobody back in 1971 did this stuff, at least when it comes to major prog rock stars — Yes were busy complexizing its music, ELP went straight to the classical genre, basically continuing The Nice’s legacy, King Crimson were sucking free jazz influences, and Genesis (with whom they have *arguably* things in common the most) lacked hard-rocking energy, concentrating instead on mellotrons, twelve-strings acoustic textures, and some pretty pretty music. But I digress.

Anyway, for such a classic album, I was surprised there’s a relative lack of diversity. Relative, because there’s at least distinctions between “epics”, relatively normal songs, and pretty acoustic links. But somehow it gets pretty tiring, at least to me, around tenth track or so. Maybe because of similar instrumentations and mood between the harder rocking songs — of course, you could argue that Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound, immaculate as it was, also didn’t change much in terms of instrumentations — but it still sounds exciting to my ears, while Aqualung drags in places, even if none of the songs suck or something.

“Aqualung” and “Locomotive Breath” are the most well-known songs off this album, and quite deservedly so, even though I’d be pressed hard to tell what makes these songs stand out from the others. But those are not the only good songs off the album — I somehow also favour “Up to Me”, with its menacing riff, and “Hymn 43”, where the stop-and-start riff manages to sound almost funky (!) in its own way, and of course, “My God”, even though I still don’t know what to do with the mid-section. Is it a brilliant medieval-styled flute solo or just a pointless instrumental section? You tell me…

Still, the songs are good, the riffs are well written, and the album as a whole still sounds fresh today; even though the progressive influences might have been exaggerated, it is still arguably one of the most unique art-rock creations of its day.

ROKY ERICKSON AND THE ALIENS – The Evil One (1981)

Review by: Irfan Hidayatullah
Album assigned by: A.A

To this date, I haven’t really acquaintanced with the 13th Floor Elevators’ work, apart from the Nuggets-made-famous “You’re Gonna Miss Me”, so I can’t really compare Roky Erickson’s style with his new ‘band’ with that one. Based on the description of his previous works, however, this could not be a hell of a stylistic change, there are still traces of garage rock sounds, coupled with typical seventies hard rock/roots rock style.

 

Despite being released in 1980, a quick listen to the album’s sound shows that this record still belongs to the seventies: just a typical garage band with guitar-bass-drums and minimal amount of electronic keyboards. To go with the new sound, apparently Roky made himself a formula: typical mid-tempo/fast hard rock with loud riffs, powerful screaming and a couple special effects thrown in for a good measure. The melodies are not really memorable; even if there’s an attempt to catch the listeners in, be it by a couple vocal hooks, sometimes going for different grooves, different tempos, etc., yet I have a hard time telling the songs from one to another. Okay, so “Two Headed Dog” may be one of the most memorable here, underpinned by a riff similar to the one found at the Kinks’ “Set Me Free”. There’s also an unexpected shifts in moods, to the cheerier one, like the CCR-esque “I Walked With a Zombie” (I wonder if the sound has got anything to do with Stu Cook producing?), or the more upbeat “Mine Mine Mind”.

 

The rest of the album, however, are rather difficult to go in one sitting, at least for me. There’s nothing really offensive to be found–yet it sounds way too formulaic to catch my attention throughout. I guess repeated listening will do the trick, as I haven’t subjected this to more than one proper listen; in the end, this could be recommended to any Elevators’ fan looking for more products, or any typical seventies garage/hard rock fans. Don’t expect a mind-blowing masterpiece, though.