THE MAGUS

UNIVERSAL TOTEM ORCHESTRA started out as an offshoot of Runaway Totem when Giuseppe Buttiglione (bass) wanted an outlet to get really freaky way past his band mates' comfort zone and with the project's 1999 debut "Rituale Alieno" which means "Alien Rituals," he achieved just that! The zeuhl style of progressive rock offers a nice stable backbone of rhythmic chunks to paint soundscapes over and Buttiglione offered one of the most diverse and bizarre examples of the genre so far.

Due to the complex nature of creating a UNIVERSAL TOTEM ORCHESTRA album, it took nine years for this sophomore release THE MAGUS to emerge but considering the dense amount of musical influences on board probably required that much time to fine tune. This album is a beast with an 80-minute running time and only six tracks, four of which extend past the 13-minute mark. The opening "De Astrologia" alone is a whopping 19 1/2 minutes long! While the Magma inspired zeuhl has always been the major inspiration, that aspect was stepped up on THE MAGUS a bit but the album is chock full of diverse elements ranging from opera, classical and jazz to hard rock and symphonic prog.

In addition to the star vocal style of Ana Torres Fraile, there are choirs, frenetic keyboard wizardry, avant-prog time signature angularities especially in the guitar playing and beautiful piano sequences. While the zeuhl rhythms offer a dose of hypnotic cyclical riffs, there are plenty of seductive melodic performances as well as extreme complexity with time signature rich counterpoints gunning for the most outrageous display of brutal prog dexterity. THE MAGUS is something like part Magma, part Yugen, part IQ and part psychotic cabaret that happens to include a bit of jazz and classical to the

With Giuseppe out of the band, Yanik Lorenzo Andreatta picks up the bass duties and anchors the band's sound with his extremely dexterous finger workouts. In fact most of the band members are different than the debut with only Ana Fraile returning on vocals along with Giorgio Colin on drums and percussion however guest musician saxophonist Antonio Fedeli returned as a full member. The album is quite diverse in how it changes up tempos, time signatures, dynamics and motifs in a heartbeat and navigates effortlessly through guitar drenched rock segments to complex vocal polyphony parts without missing a beat.

At times sounding like new age music in the clouds and others like a schizoid metal band, UNIVERSAL TOTEM ORCHESTRA certainly made a viable followup to its alienating debut without taking a cookie cutter approach of simply copying and pasting. While all aspects of this album are utterly unique and brilliant, the over the top keyboard solos are probably the highlight although they don't occur as often as i would like. The vocals are absolutely flawless as well however the use of the saxophone really only occurs in smooth jazz fashion and i wish that aspect of the music would've taken on an energetic delivery in the same vein as the heavier rock parts. All in all this is an excellent album which displays an amazing passion for perfection although it does fall short of just that. A truly unique contribution to the zeuhl style.