Detailed Reviews [Fox Hole Commune - 2003 - "One Locus Which Consists of Three Fragments"]

Fox Hole Commune (Japan) - 2003 - "One Locus Consisting of Three Fragments"
(30 min, Poseidon)

Prolusion. "One Locus Which Consists of Three Fragments" is most likely the debut album by Japan's Fox Hole Commune. The band's motto is: "We Make the 21st Century Schizoid Music".

Synopsis. While the title of this output is somewhat a locus-pocus (hocus-pocus, sorry), as the album consists of nineteen, and not three, fragments, the album itself sounds really like one continuous locus, and it's impossible to determine the culmination of this ever-changing kaleidoscope of musical events. Indeed, this 30-minute work contains so much music (yes, it would be hard to say more precisely) and is so eventful that all of this will always be beyond your imagination - at least until you listen to the album, and please be assured that you've never heard anything like this before. This all-instrumental music is incredibly original, very complex, and just fantastically intriguing and consists usually of amazingly eclectic interplay between solos of bass, Stick (often sounding like an electric guitar), synthesizer, and drums and passages of violin. It's for the most part highly intensive, but even the parts characterized with a more or less quiet sound are as intricate as those rushing like a mountain flow, and there is a plenty of such on this album where the means of revolution, involution, and evolution in music take on special significance. Within the framework of most, if not all, of the album's nineteen fragments the band 'flies' from one musical dimension to another as easily as a rubber ball jumps on the ground. To define the general stylistic direction of this music, I don't see any other appropriate term but Fifth Element, which, in this case, is based on both of the guitar and symphonic sorts of Art-Rock, RIO, and Avant-garde, though on some pieces a guitar Art-Rock eclipses its 'neighbors' in this astounding musical community. Sometimes, there also are the arrangements that are much close to those in Classic Symphonic Art-Rock. Most compositions however, begin with bass being in the foreground and giving initial themes for the parts of other instruments, but then all of them suddenly break loose and merge into a very eclectic jam rushing rapidly and as if sweeping away all the 'classic' musical rules and conceptions, yet, still remaining structured and open for consecutive comprehension.

Conclusion. This is a really outstanding work, though most of the Prog lovers might be puzzled with its high complexity and singularity. Whereas those naturally disposed towards highly complicated forms of music will experience plenty of wonderful feelings while cracking this hard musical nut.

VM: October 27, 2003