Точное время / PRECISE TIME

The classical/jazz quartet Happy 55 describes their own music as "Electro Chamber Prog", with the more Progressive elements increasing steadily over their last few releases. The band's latest to date is a too-brief three song EP, recorded in 2015 and intended to fill out the "Warm Things" mini-album, before publishers expressed nervous concern over what they heard as "too many arpeggios" and yanked these tracks for later use.

Damn those meddling publishers! If the story is true, some of the best cuts were left off the earlier effort, and the unfortunate result was two excellent EPs that might have been an essential single album if left intact.

I've tried to define the Happy 55 style in other reviews, as a complex yet playful combination of piano, clarinet, and (more recently) occasional Eno-inspired non-musical noise. But once again the band itself says it best, calling it "acoustic sound transmitted through high voltage and digital meat grinders": a surefire endorsement to any self-respecting Proghead.

The future of the group is currently in doubt, after pianist/bandleader Yaroslav Borisov relocated from the city of Voronezh to - of all places - Fayetteville, North Carolina in the United States. But he leaves behind a small, vital body of challenging instrumental music, including this short but sweet EP, maybe the easiest point of entry for curious listeners.

A quick addendum...the last track of the EP, listed here as "Tolk", is actually named "Толк": a Cyrillic word translating to something like "Sense", as in "for inquisitive newcomers this mini-album makes perfect _____".