FUTURE RETRO SPASM

The album covers of this record give a quite prophetical first impression, and I think it stands as greates achievements from the group's five years span of musical development, excluding the masterpiece "The Men From Dystopia" recorded with Mr. Kawabata Makoto.

In the beginning, monumental "Olympos" is drawn to the horizon via anticipating aural tension creation, building interesting rhythmic hooks and spiraling in jazzy levels. A crash of gong summons a stagnant rhythm to the stage, accompanied with a fine melody from the saxophone. More striking math rock oriented background for lyrical side appears after a short and sudden sonic missile. Drums are given space for an effect treated solo, before the song returns to the starting theme. Song "G" is built from simple repetitive notes interacting and forming layer of rhythms, and t this basis is united sounds delivering feelings of dangerous urban jungle. Minimal and menacing song for solo instruments and hypnotic rhythms is relieved neatly to more free causeways, cruising happily in highway of sounds. Fine decreasing of intensity is achieved in the end, and convincing union of happy and violent elements merges as solemn surreal entity. "Terminus Est" starts with gamelan sounding web of licks, feeling like more powerful and violent version of King Crimson's discipline. The changes in tonal motives create furious sensations of danger and awesomeness, contrasted with "The Abandoned World Of Automata". This long song has laid back calm presence, where a really fine bass melody is conjured upon repeating hypnotic webs. Saxophone creeps in later really euphorically, spacey guitar crowning the tension. The musical freedom increases in the later parts of the tune, which finally returns to the chords were it was borne. Before ending, the main theme smashes in with powered strength, before accepting the jazzy calmness to close the track. This epic is certainly one of my own personal favorites on this record! "Death Star Narcolepsy" returns to more twisting planes, John Zorn reminding chaos noise aggressions appear as fast furious smashes. This terror gets contrast from sudden quietness and sharp rhythm counting for a more exotic klezmer sounding solo. The last twists lead to "Quetzalcoatl", which summarizes to heavy and nasty beatings with quick cross picking euphoria, leading to cool cruising on highway of jazzy saxophone sabotage.

I would warmly recommend this record for fans of heavy avant-gardist jazzy psych rock. I was personally interested to learn to know some fascinating underground music from Zagreb, as I got privilege to visit this beautiful Croatian city in the releasing year of this album. Sadly I missed their gig announced to be there quite close during time of writing, as seeing this group on stage would be very tempting opportunity. By listening the earlier records it has been interesting to witness band evolve from a progressive stoner psych rock as a more sophisticated noise jazz-rock ensemble. I have not heard the most recent records yet though, so I'm unaware the traits their artistic innovation has hurled them to.

4.5 stars. This band has been functioning since 2003 and this is studio album number seven from 2010. From Croatia, Niko the guitarist/composer is the main musician here as this is his project. He's changed the lineup for every album up to this point. Still this record has connections to "Black Om Rising" mainly because of the sax and heavy, complex sound but there are differences. First Lovro the sax player is given much more freedom and prominence on here and the man is a little crazy. I mean dissonance is his middle name. In fact many tag this with Avant Jazz because of his work on here. The surprise was that psychedelic music on the first half of the 14 1/2 minute "The Abandoned World Of Automata". None of that psychedelia on "Black Om Rising" so that was a nice touch. I mean it just trips along mid- paced with that repeated guitar melody for 7 plus minutes. So good. By the way the sax player is on only three of their twelve studio albums.

This record is a blast from start to finish although the second last song "Death Star Narcolepsy" at over 9 1/2 minutes keeps me from giving that fifth star. By this point I'm not ready for the most intense song on the album, a relentlessly heavy and abrasive piece with maybe a couple of mini breaks from that. The closer "Quetzalcoatl" is the shortest but one of the better tracks at 3 minutes. It reminds me of KING CRIMSON's "Islands" with that sax and sound early on. Some amazing drum work on this one and throughout really. That was the one change from "Black Om Rising" a new drummer.

That opener "Olympos" is a killer at almost 9 minutes. A drum/bass intro as some industrial sounding sax joins in. Check out the drumming though. The sax starts getting dissonant then we hear a gong then here we go! Love the rest of this song as they hit us with a mid-paced, sax led beauty. Man this gets insane after 4 1/2 minutes, just some incredible intensity. The bass is crushing it. A calm around 6 1/2 minutes before an all out assault ends it. "G" is much like the opener and almost the same length. A catchy and heavy tune that is complex to boot. I mean check out the "Discipline" era KING CRIMSON style going on here but much heavier. The guitar ends up howling over top and the sax starts getting dissonant again late. More of all of this again on "Terenus Est" a track worth mentioning for sure and at 5 minutes a concise version of what went on before.

Not big on the inappropriate album covers, I get it, it's art but the music is what counts and this record is delivers in a huge way.