Anekdoten
From Within
Virta
1999
Wayside Music

The first thing one may notice about this new CD from Anekdoten is some decidedly bleak artwork on the cover and in the CD booklet. It’s almost all black. Have the long Swedish winters gotten to Anekdoten? Is this CD even more depressing than their previous work? Not really, but From Within does signal a movement in a new direction. It shows the band reaching a new level of maturity as they continue to refine their style.

Those attracted to Anekdoten for their tendency toward heavy riffing may find a little less to get excited about on From Within. Sure, the album still has all the trademarks that made Nucleus and Vemod so excellent, but a new ingredient has been added to the mix – subtlety. In the past, the band was fond of frequent instrumental passages which would boil over with energy and complexity. Frenzied guitar solos and heavy, distorted bass stomped through beds of swirling Mellotron as Jan Erik Liljeström bellowed his way through the lyrics. This album takes things down a notch. From Within rarely boils over, instead it simmers. The title piece is a perfect example. The verses, sung with dignified melancholy, are backed by a constant, tension building snare drum roll. This leads to a melodic instrumental section. This is dominated by a liquidy sounding guitar riff which is never too heavy, but is the highest point of energy for the song. Beautiful and pensive, but never really heavy or very intense.

The Mellotron drenched “Hole,” is one of the last remaining vestiges of Anekdoten’s once unabashed King Crimson affinity. Its long instrumental section is quite reminiscent of Crimson’s “Starless.” Another standout piece is the smoldering, goose bump inducing “Firefly,” complete with piano and vocal harmonies courtesy of Anna Sofi Dahlberg. Also excellent is “The Sun Absolute,” an instrumental dominated by a Magma-esque bass riff.

Overall, this album benefits from a stronger than usual effort for detail and a delicate touch. Many of the pieces are artfully adorned with piano, cello and shimmering, sometimes gauzy vibraphone. All are a nice touch. The lovely, ghostly strains of the celebrated Mellotron are even more pronounced on From Within than on past albums due to a decreased reliance on guitar and heavy unison riffing.

This album may prompt listeners to wonder: Is Anekdoten poised to mellow and/or sell out? After listening to this album, a degree of mellowing out seems inevitable. That may even be a good thing as long as heavy riffs continue to be replaced by more thoughtful, artful music. Selling out (or more gently put: breaking through) seems less likely, but is beginning to seem like a distant possibility. Songs like “Groundbound” confirm Anekdoten’s influences outside of progressive rock, including current “alternative” rock. One may wonder whether the lure of more trendy styles of music, combined with Anekdoten’s relative success and quickly accessible brand of heavy prog will ever amalgamate to elevate the band’s profile to an alternative radio level. We may not know for years, but for now they play for us. Bless them.

California Guitar Trio
Rocks the West
Discipline Global Mobile
2000
California Guitar Trio concert

From the opening moments of this live CD, it should be apparent that the California Guitar Trio have a small but very enthusiastic fan base. This album is an accurate representation of what it is like to see the CGT in concert – three guys playing acoustic guitars with an amazingly high level of dexterity and precision to an audience of enraptured fans and amazed neophytes.

On this disc, the CGT are joined on about half of the songs by former King Crimson bassist Tony Levin. His playing is always very subtle and tasteful and never detracts from the intimate, mostly acoustic nature of the performances. One Bill Janssen also appears on four tracks. His obnoxious saxophone solo piece “Blue-Eyed Monkey,” mid-way through the album is an out of place distraction, but his presence only barely mars the other pieces on which he plays. Aside from the sax playing, there is almost nothing negative to be said about this album. It may be CGT’s best yet – sax or not.

Paul Richards, Bert Lams and Hideyo Moriya put their high-tech custom acoustics through the ringer on a mixed bag of classical, big band and surf rock covers as well as some of their most challenging original pieces. Two surprise pieces are Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and an ancient Japanese piece called “Rokudan” (you’ll recognize it when you hear it).

As with previous releases, the CGT continue to redefine and expand the boundaries of acoustic guitar music. All three of these players were in Robert Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists. There they learned a rigid set of technical and philosophical lessons on guitar and music in general. The most obvious product of Fripp’s instruction in CGT’s music is found in the trio’s penchant for intricate cross picking techniques – the kind of stuff that made King Crimson classics like “Fracture” and Discipline” so amazing. It’s all over this and other CGT releases, but one needn’t be a Crimhead to enjoy the California Guitar Trio, as there is a healthy dose of fun in their music – especially on this CD. Whether ripping through the surf music romp of “Misirlou” or picking with classical precision through Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the California Guitar Trio seem to do the impossible by blending a myriad of different kinds of music, all played with skill and virtuosity, into a whole which is both intellectually stimulating and highly accessible.

Peter Hammill
Fools Mate
Virgin
1971
Manifest Discs & Tapes, Charleston, SC

Peter Hammill is well known among prog circles for his dramatic, anguished vocals and doom-laden vision as the front man for the long defunct Van Der Graaf Generator. Fewer proggers are very familiar with his extremely extensive solo recording career which continues to this day. At the crossroads of his Van Der Graaf Generator and solo careers is his first solo album, Fools Mate.This album is a logical point for Van Der Graaf fans to start investigating Hammill’s solo output since it includes performances by all of that band’s members. Also of interest are several appearances by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp on guitar.

Despite this, those expecting a “lost” Van Der Graaf album may be disappointed at first listen to Fools Mate. Even at this early date (1971), Hammill was apparently already seeking to explore shorter, more conventional song oriented forms. Some effort, however, will reward the listener with some of those qualities which made Van Der Graaf so endearing – as well as some new treats.

The album opens with the instantly likable “Imperial Zeppelin.” Of all the songs on the album, this one most strongly evokes memories of Van Der Graaf Generator. Grinding Hammond organ and David Jackson’s inimitable saxophone honks contribute to an unusually peppy Van Der Graaf Generator vibe. Don’t let the beginning of the song fool you, however, as Hammill proposes spreading love and peace from a Zeppelin “flying high across the sky.” This goofy utopian vision sounds like a misplaced Gong track at first, but eventually gives way to Hammill’s admission that it wouldn’t do any good.

“Solitude” is an amazing display of Hammill’s chillingly effective descriptions of feelings of loneliness and cosmic insignificance. Twelve string acoustic guitar, harmonica and some freaky studio effects like backwards sounds and phasing combine to paint a picture of Hammill as a psychedelic cowboy sitting by the campfire in the dessert. One might almost picture him there underneath a sky where “mortals hang on metal, but who’s to know how long either will last.” Six songs later, Hammill brilliantly weaves some of the same threads into the cloth of “Viking” to continue a similar theme. The same harmonica and acoustic guitar reappear to color the optimistic narrative of Vikings returning home from an even older western frontier.

Hammill covers a good bit of stylistic ground on this album, from intimate acoustic numbers to an organ, piano and flute track that sounds like it could have come from an early Le Orme or PFM album. It never gets too varied that it feels disjointed, however. Fools Mate carries all the marks of a well crafted solo album from one of progressive rock’s most distinctive singers.

Heldon
Electronique Guerilla/It’s Always Rock ‘n’ Roll
Cuneiform
1973(?)/1975
New Sonic Architecture

Heldon must be one of the most underrated bands in the field of progressive rock. This is perplexing given the quality of the group’s music, especially on this set. Electronique Guerilla/It’s Always Rock ‘n’ Roll is nothing short of amazing. This two-CD set compiles Heldon’s first and third albums. They compliment each other well, so the continuity from one to the next is nearly seamless. The music on these two albums is groundbreaking even by today’s standards. In the early ‘70s, it must have sounded as if it came from outer space. In fact, it is tempting to lump these albums in with the ”kosmiche” or space music genre of progressive rock typified by German bands and artists like Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel or Klaus Schulze. It seems likely that these exerted at least some influence on Heldon’s main man Richard Pinhas, but there are other forces at work here which make Heldon unique. Pinhas was also under the sway of English bands like King Crimson, Soft Machine and Matching Mole. The most obvious influence from England is undoubtedly the guitar playing of Robert Fripp. (On the second Heldon album there is even a piece titled “In the Wake of King Fripp”!) Pinhas seems not the least bit ashamed to mimic Fripp’s distinctive “laser beam” sound and technique, but set against the backdrop of droning and gurgling synthesizers it creates a completely different atmosphere from just about anything Crimson ever did. However, there is one track on this set, that sounds as if it was created in an attempt to see how close Pinhas could come to recreating Fripp and Eno’s “Swastika Girls” from the legendary No Pussyfooting album. It’s another slice of loveliness for those who wish there was more recorded Frippertronics available.

Another great piece is “Cotes de Cachalot ala Psylocybine.” This eight minute soundscape pits ominous synth echoes against a wailing, moaning, distant sounding electric guitar solo. Like most of this set, that’s all there is to it. No drums, vocals nor a hint of traditional song structure, just complete electronic mesmerization.

Disc two starts off with the massive “Aurore.” This 18-minute piece begins and ends with a drone note melded from an analog synth and a harmonium. An ultra-mellow synth melody develops and interlaces itself slowly around the constant drone. More than once this writer has fallen asleep enveloped in this piece’s analog cocoon only to be jolted awake by the all out guitar assault of “Zind Destruction” three tracks later. This is the lone heavy piece on the entire set. Whatever “Zind” is, it definitely gets completely destroyed by the end. This track foreshadows Heldon’s more rhythmic proto-industrial guitar and synth noise fests found on later albums like Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale and Interface.

This set is absolutely essential listening for anyone interested in electronic music and is guaranteed to blow away most people’s ideas of what cutting edge music sounds like.

King Crimson
The ConstruKction of Light
Discipline Global Mobile/Virgin
2000
Sam Goody, Avenues Mall, Jacksonville, FL

It’s about time! Five years after the triumphant return of King Crimson with the release of Thrak comes this long overdue follow up. In the meantime Crimheads have had to settle for a seemingly endless stream of side project and archival releases in the form of ProjeKcts 1-4, as well as a couple of live albums. Several of these releases showed Crimson and its members in research and development mode, going into several different directions, from the frighteningly avant-garde THRaKaTTak to the dullness of ProjeKct 2. While some Crimson enthusiasts ate this stuff up, others just wondered if the real King Crimson would ever reappear – and what would it sound like when it did?

Now we know. Even after the elimination of two band members and all that Thrakking and ProjeKcting, the new King Crimson sounds like, well, the old King Crimson. In fact, some of it sounds like really old King Crimson.

For the most part, The ConstruKction of Light sounds like a logical progression from Thrak. The major difference between the two is that The ConstruKction of Light is more about quality while Thrak was all about quantity. (Did anyone else think that two versions of almost every little song on that album was a little ridiculous?) The ConstruKction of Light has very little in the way of filler on it. And there are no Beatle-esque love songs!

The new album has two obvious faults, however. The first is a collection of some of the lamest lyrics in Crimson history. In the early days Crimson’s surrealistically poetic lyrics mostly turned off the band’s detractors. These new lyrics are bugging even the die-hard fans. “ProzaKc Blues,” the album opener, is rendered almost unlistenable by asinine lyrics coupled with a distracting effect that lowers Adrian Belew’s voice about two octaves. The lyrics for the title piece fare even worse for being absolutely nonsensical. Fortunately this piece is divided into two consecutive tracks, one being instrumental only and quite lovely. The other, less offensive fault of this CD is a certain lack of original ideas. Despite all that R and D the band has been doing for the last few years, it certainly seems they are resting on the laurels of past achievements. However, forgiving listeners might be inclined to marvel at what achievements they were – and are.

One such delicious achievement is the New Revised Version of “Fracture.” “FraKctured” does what the name implies by breaking up the original instrumental into little pieces and rearranging it. Fragments of recognizable melody and rhythm from the past intermingle with new ones. And like the original, it focuses on a super-intricate and angular guitar melody that builds to an intense and very heavy crescendo. Very, very enjoyable stuff, even if it’s not very groundbreaking by Crimson standards. “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part IV” takes a very similar approach, alluding to the first three installments of the same name with some vague allusions to “Red” thrown in. There’s also a fair amount of the ‘80s Crimson’s dual guitar melody synchronization a la “Discipline” going on in other tracks.

“Into the frying Pan” is the most tolerable of the few tracks with vocals. In fact, it’s a quite enjoyable and relatively accessible song in a similar vein as “Dinosaur” from Thrak. “The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum” is a truly new sounding and somewhat humorous piece with a couple of wonderfully freaky guitar solos set against a dense, electronic, polyrhythmic background.

Those who lament the loss (or dismissal?) of drummer Bill Bruford and bassist Tony Levin need not worry. Their respective counterparts Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn do a wonderfully good job of taking full control and acknowledging their former band mates’ massive contributions to King Crimson’s sound while finding room to further establish their own musical voices.

Despite one or two glaring flaws,The ConstruKction of Light is a surprisingly good album from one of the most unpredictable bands in any musical genre.

Nathan Mahl
The Clever Use of Shadows
independent release
1998
Wayside Music

The unfortunate cover art to this CD may make one fear that the music within is yet another album of watered down neo-prog refuse. The band stands perched on what looks like the ruins of some long destroyed castle. Above them is the band’s name in some hackneyed medieval looking font. A closer look reveals that the band’s keyboardist/vocalist is pulling a gun out of his waistband. (Gangsta’ prog?) To make matters worse, it looks as if the cover’s designer had just discovered the texture filters in Adobe Photoshop when this cover was designed. One might be tempted to wrap it back up and send it back to the mail order company from which it came before even listening to it. Those who do make it past the cover, however, might be surprised.

What we have here is a fairly noble attempt at revitalized symphonic prog with a distinct nod to the past without being completely derivative. The album is mostly instrumental with an emphasis on a pretty good imitation Hammond organ and lots of excellent guitar soloing. The pieces are all quite episodic. One minute it’s a very Gentle Giant influenced medieval clavinet and classical guitar section, then a soaring electric guitar solo. And that can happen several times in each song. In fact, there are so many ideas floating around in these pieces that it can get a little overwhelming. There isn’t really even any breathing room between tracks, so the entire album sounds like one big prog jam between members of Gentle Giant and National Health.

Probably the best thing about this album is José Bergeron’s guitar playing. He can shred like a Joe Satriani or John Petrucci, but more often displays the more mature melodic sense of an Allan Holdsworth. He sparingly uses post-Van Halen techniques without falling into prog metal cliché territory. Even better, he seems to be well versed in the realms of classical and jazz guitar.

Unfortunately, a couple of the songs are not instrumental and are marred by some lackluster vocals and even worse lyrics about how hard it is to be prog. Most discriminating music listeners are all too aware of the indifference of the music industry and the record buying public toward creative music. Complaining about it in song became a cliché as soon as Magellan (or was it Cairo?) uttered “No more bore playing in 4/4 time.” What Nathan Mahl need to do is shut up and play their guitar.

Nodens Ictus
Spacelines
Stretchy Records
2000
www.ozrics.com

What a surprise this treasure is! A chance visit to the brand new official Ozric Tentacles web site at www.ozrics.com reveals that the boys with funny hair and brightly colored sweaters have been busy compiling an album of leftover material from years past. The twist is that it’s an all mellow, “ambient” affair. The results are surprisingly good.

Nodens Ictus is mostly Ed Wynne and Joie Hinton with occasional help from other Ozric Tentacles members. Basically this album is chock full of some of the best examples of Ozric Tentacles’ mellower side. Ed’s rockin’ guitar playing has been swept under the rug and drums are used minimally. When they do appear, they are frequently mimicking various third world style rhythms and instruments. Synthesizers dominate the album. The good part is that there are some analogs on here since some of these tracks are from as far back as the late ‘80s, when Ozric Tentacles were still using their old Moogs and such. Analog or digital, it all sounds good on here. All your favorite quirky Ozric Tentacles synth sounds are here, plus a few new ones. And there are even some honest-to-goodness synth solos which are quite nice. Witness the liquidy pitch-bending solo on “Atavista.” These guys can do more than just push some buttons and let the sequencers run. (Though they do a fair amount of that on this album too.) The most interesting track is “Way of the Wind.” This piece is from 1986, when Ozric Tentacles were little more than a cult band with a couple of cassette only releases under their belts. They hadn’t yet become so formulaic and predictable as they are now either. This little gem has the influence of Edgar Froese’s magnificent Epsilon in Malaysian Pale all over it. Is that a Mellotron in flute mode underneath that sequencer riff? Doubtful, but this piece is stunning in its creative use of various unidentifiable synth sounds used in much the same way that Tangerine Dream granddaddy of kosmiche music used to do it – right down to the synthesized bird sounds.

Spacelines is one of the most interesting releases to come out of the Ozric Tentacles camp in a while. If you like the Ozrics but have grown weary of their predictability, pick this up and remember what was so special about them in the first place.

David Vincent
No Entiendo
Gazul/Musea
1999
promotional copy from Musea

The identity of David Vincent is something of a mystery. The name is apparently a pseudonym for Enrique Carranza, who actually appears in the credits for this CD. But it’s more than his name that’s hard to figure out. So is his music.

The first track on No Entiendo is a fast, accessible rocker that is somewhat reminiscent of something Ozric Tentacles might do, minus the keyboards. The listener might think this album is going to be an easy-to-swallow instrumental rock album with prog tendencies, but two tracks later the album has descended into dissonant electronic weirdness on “Attracteur Etrange 1.” This piece eventually develops a more playful, melodic side, setting up a theme of dichotomy which runs throughout the album. Lively, accessible electric and acoustic guitar riffs are constantly pitted against chiming, distorted electronics or oddly manipulated recordings of conversations. Conventional song structures pop up briefly only to dissolve under the weight of an approaching wall of vibrating synthesizers. Nothing is what it seems. Not for very long anyway.

The press release for this CD implies that Henry Cow and Frank Zappa are among David Vincent’s main influences. Other reference points might be late Heldon, Ozric Tentacles and some of the American RIO bands, but David Vincent doesn’t sound too much like anything else for very long. No Entiendo is as original as it is uncategorizeable. It comes with recommendation, but only to those with a taste for the unique.