Short Reviews [Andy Toomey - 2025 - "Crank"]

I am always intrigued by anything released on Iapetus as the music is always interesting and challenging, but it is also generally instrumental, so I was rather intrigued with this as on first appearance it is more like a “normal” rock album, and it is only on closer investigation that one discovers what is going on. The line-up comprises Andy Toomey (bass, vocals), Markus Reuter (touch guitar, electric piano, piano, sampled vocals, Mellotron, bass synth, synthesizer, organ) and his Centrozoon bandmate Bernhard Wostheinrich (samples, sounds, synthesizer) plus Shawn Crowder (acoustic drums, electronic percussion). Apparently, the recording process comprised the musicians creating the songs on the first day, then Andy providing lyrics and vocals the next, so everything was written and recorded in just two days with no pre-work, which is an amazing accomplishment. I do wonder if the Jason Statham movie, ‘Crank’, had anything to do with the concept as those two days must have been incredibly intense as the musicians came together to create songs and Andy was not only playing but also having to compose the lyrical ideas and vocal melodies. The result is a diverse release where I can’t help but think the idea is cleverer than the songs themselves, and undoubtedly the album would have been quite different if they had taken these recordings as a base instead of making it the final product, as while some of the material works well there are others where the result is so different to the rest of the album that it is quite jarring. I have long been a huge fan of Reuter and Wostheinrich, but what makes their albums so vital is the lack of knowledge of what is coming next as the ideas flow, but here those sensibilities have been constrained by knowing there needs to be an allowance for a more standard structure and room for vocals. The free-flowing instrumentals have been replaced with something more rigid, and Toomey’s vocals also suffer at times, with songs like “More” losing the finesse of the underlying keyboards due to what is happening on top. An album of songs will always be compared to other albums of songs, no matter what an achievement it is from a recording standpoint, and while this is an interesting experiment which on one level is a massive success, on another is one to which I am unlikely to often return.