Analysis.
The second disc is better than the first one in terms of quality of music. It reveals fewer tracks that use electronic percussion at their bottom end, as well as those featuring bizarre narratives. What particularly gladdens the ear, however, is that, despite the – sometimes – clearly loose playing, the music almost always has a sense of purpose, unlike that on the album’s first item. Keyboardist/harmonica player Mats Oberg and drummer/keyboardist Morgan Agren are still the featured musicians, but the other participants shine as well – by no means throughout, but obviously more often then they did (or maybe were allowed to do) on Disc 1. Apart from
Secret Room Outtakes and
Zepp, plain pieces with only harmonica, synthesizer and electronic percussion in the arrangement, only disc opener
Dr. Thor and its follow-up
Advokaten and the Jazz (the first half of the track, to be more precise) are performed by the duo alone, in both cases deploying acoustic pianos and drums, which are played in a quasi-jazz manner. The rest of the latter piece finds Tommy Thordsson’s bass joining the above duet of instruments, and is an intense, up-tempo, purely improvisational jazz, reminiscent in delivery of that by the Chick Corea Trio – the one that featured bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschulz besides Chick himself. This is a highly impressive opus in its own way, displaying that the band has outstanding mastery of that particular field of making music. Being married to the power of rock, this approach finds its continuation within the last third of the disc.
Secret Room Outtakes and
Bass are both creations of classic Jazz-Fusion somewhere in the style of
Return To Forever circa “Light As a Feather”. Jimmy Agren on guitar and Patrick Ogren on cello are frequently on the spot here, as they also are on most of the remaining compositions, doing a lot more than merely supporting the above trio. Only in terms of overall style
Hjortron Fran Mars would be similar to the previously described tracks, as the music is slow-paced and fairly smooth alike – think the band favors melody over structural development.
Banned Again and
Advokaten le Messian are each a multi-section work of two distinctive genres, RIO and Jazz-Fusion, while Daisy reminds me most of the time of a chamber rock take on one of the pieces from Modest Mussorgsky’s famous piano cycle “Pictures at an Exhibition”. Full of original chord progressions and dramatic dynamics, all three of these are remarkable creations, the latter being an absolute winner to my mind. I feel free to declare that
Griefen, Q and
I Know Where I Have It all blend RIO with e-music, since the chamber rock arrangements (which are fine in themselves) develop over a monotonous groove ‘provided’ by electronic percussion, if not a drum machine. Oh, almost forgot to tell you about
Slut-text, Resp Rush and
If I Only Had a Pianet, the first of which is the longest track here (too long for such a plain ambient piece as it is), and the latter two the keyboard sketches, each of which barely exceeds 30 seconds in length. In other words, it didn’t do without makeweights ‘this time’ either.
Conclusion.
This release, where excellent tracks adjoin mediocrities and so on, brings me back to Frank Zappa’s discography, most of the items of which are similar in this respect. Frank, however, could allow himself to do anything else with/within his outings, as he was a rich man, who had his own studio and a recording company as well. Back to the hero of this occasion: This is a very long album (133:15) and comes across as being artificially overextended. However, it could have been excellent throughout – if it would have been issued as a single disc, consisting exclusively of compositions that feature the entire Mats/Morgan band lineup-sextet.
VM=Vitaly Menshikov: May 15 & 16, 2011
The Rating Room
