OSSICLES

The Veland cousins' debut album under the Ossicles name sees them mashing up vintage prog keyboards and compositional approaches with modern electronic wizardry. With influences ranging from jazz-rock to trance, it's a bit of a wild mix, and there's points where it feels a bit like a slightly incoherent demonstration piece, revealing their capability to play well without necessarily hanging together as a cohesive artistic statement. Fun stuff, and impressively executed for a two-man hobbyist band, but whilst they might display it proudly on their mantelpiece, it's not a masterpiece by a long shot. Stream it on bandcamp before spending money, is my advice.

Norwegian band OSSICLES was formed in 2011 by cousins Sondre Veland and Bastian Veland. Their debut album "Mantelpiece" was met with praise from some noteworthy musicians, such as Steven Wilson and Mike Portnoy, and the latter invited them to perform at the Progressive Nation at Sea event in 2014. "Music for Wastelands" is their second studio album, released by the Norwegian label Karisma Records in the late fall of 2015.

Elegant and often accessible progressive rock with a distinct jazz-rock undercurrent is what this Norwegian duo provides us on their second studio album "Music for Wastelands", with a few detours into landscapes more aligned with purebred progressive rock and occasional lapses into territories of a more challenging general nature. Those who tend to admire compelling and careful blends of progressive rock and jazz-rock strike me as a key audience for this album, and then especially those in that crowd who appreciate the occasional left turn into landscapes somewhat more demanding.

When songs of a first album have been written many years ago, it can give us a little masterpiece. These young musicians and brothers Sondre and Bastien Veland have been to the Steven Wilson's school with an album that is influenced by many styles of music from pop, jazz, ambient and progressive rock. The music is rich in atmosphere and the vocals sometimes serve as another instrument carrying the melody. The songs structures and the overall sound is as I said firmly in the style of Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree with the transition with some slow paced acoustic passage to heavier electric sections. The mood of the music is mostly dark and the tempo rather slow but the emotion with occasional burst of heavier guitar parts is perfectly developed to create some beautiful songs and catchy chorus.

The song "Watersoul II" brings some techno passages that share some OSI influence. "Slur" shows the darker and stranger side of the music with hunting voices. The epic of 27 minutes "Silky Elm" offers in the first part Hindu music with strange noise, exotic instruments and sounds. What is too like about this album is that it's complex and experimental and at the same time easy to enjoy from the first listen. This is due to the way the songs have been crafted by developing the melody slowly putting upfront emotion and atmosphere before technique. I hope the band can produce another album of the quality in the near future.