BANTAM TO BEHEMOTH

With 'Birds Flying Into Buildings', Birds & Building immediately sets the tone: if you're not keen on listening to something completely hallucinatory, go your way! Bantam To Behemoth offers very strange Canterbury, sometimes violent and frenzied, sometimes peaceful and full of emotion. When I say 'Canterbury', I mean that the influence of jazz in their music is strong and obvious, but that it is found mixed with the classic elements of symphonic progressive rock of the 70ths. But make no mistake, the music of Birds & Building is something really new, at the crossroads of the Zeuhl, Canterbury and Symphonic movements. To name a band in their resemblance is a challenge, the closest would seem Moving Gelatine Plates. The compositions are loaded and varied, the sounds amazing. The whimsical song is in harmony with the music, sometimes hazy and distant, sometimes belching and disturbing. Within the tracks, the gradual changes of climates always give me an intense pleasure (as between 6:00 and 7:00 in "Chronicle of the Invisible River of Stone"). Slow build-ups ' la King Crimson are not uncommon (second part of "Battalion"). To top it off, the musicians are true maestro. They exchange the front of the stage for our greatest happiness (bass solo by Brett d'Anon in "Caution Congregates and Forms a Storm") and drummer Malcom McDuffie is supercharged.

The only downside is that the recording is mediocre. You would think it was done with basic equipment, live in a garage. The result lacks depth and sometimes the drums sound like a pan. In 2008, I attributed this defect to a lack of resources. But (unfortunately) the rest would prove me wrong. Rotten Sound is the choice of Dan Britton, who may be a great musician and songwriter, but genuinely a poor sound engineer. Pity !

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