BLACK BROCCOLI

It's always strange to review an album when you don't know much about it other than there were 4 members in the band, guitarist, bassist, drummer and tenor saxophonist. The band is considered avant-prog though their roots are in punk, jazz and prog. The EP "Black Brocolli" is one of their EPs, which apparently they have 3 or 4, but only 2 are showing on this site and everywhere else that I have looked. They have disbanded, but since I stumbled across this one sort of by mistake, I figured I could at least leave a review.

This EP has a short run time of 11 minutes but contains 6 tracks, so the songs are the right length for punk music. Right away, there is dissonance with a plucked guitar and sax playing off of each other most of the time. Drums are complex and so are the bass lines. There are definitely jazz elements at work, and a very distinct sound in each of the four instruments. There are vague melodies going on in each track, but the structure is definite RIO sounding as there is, for the most part, a lack of structure, but it seems that through the songs, there is a general direction that the music is going in, but other than that, everything seems improvised.

The music is quirky, and interesting, but I find that even in small doses, it doesn't have much personality, variety or dynamics. It's quite level in the fact that nothing really stands out except for the quirkiness. It is also all instrumental. The music could have been better with more development and experimentation, but it comes off sounding clinical without much variation. Anyway, there isn't much here to keep a person interested, but fortunately, you don't have to pay attention for very long since it is so short. I can't call it poor, because the sound is really good on it, but it's not really a good album either, so I'll settle for 2 stars.