TESSELLATION OF EUCLIDEAN SPACE

This really is a band that wants to both stay true to its roots and progress at the same time, so for 2017 the band has expanded from a four-piece with guests to a six-piece working on their own. No more using a guest flautist, as Jorinde has joined as a full member, as has Nette Willox who brings in saxophone and vocals. Don't worry, they haven't suddenly turned into a band with a lead singer, the vocals are just another effect they use when the time is right as opposed to now being a band providing backing music. They are still very influenced by Ozrics, but they have started to expand away from the core sound, especially with the use of the saxophone. In many ways, they have turned up the complexity with a great deal of layering within the sounds, and have also gone back to a more normal format of songwriting as opposed to the experimentation that existed on the previous album.

Although each of the three albums are quite similar in many ways, they know what people expect from them and are going to continue to keep delivering it, they also know that they need to move on to succeed and thrive and that is very much the case with this one. It is the strongest album of theirs that I have heard to date, and I am starting to realise that I need to go back in time and listen to their very first ones, as so far everything I have heard from the Belgians has impressed me immensely.

And again the Belgian wizards of the cosmic delight of progressive rock music. "Tessellation of Euclidean Space" is the seventh Studio album, QUANTUM FANTAY. And, in my opinion, this is one of the best, and perhaps best, at this point, the work of the group. The Belgians quite often compared to the British band OZRIC TENTACLES, whose influence is certainly felt in the works of the group of QUANTUM FANTAY. However, in my opinion, QUANTUM FANTAY more accentuated melodic components of their compositions, and the compositions more elaborate structurally . It's a good feeling when listening to the new album of the Belgians. The album is very solid, listened with interest, air flute pleasing to the ear. In General, I like the alternation of the solo parties of the guitar, synth and flute in their works. And well pleased with the undertaking of recording a guest musician, which is adorned with some moments of playing the saxophone. So, the new album, QUANTUM FANTAY was very successful.

Recommend it to all fans of instrumental progressive space rock!

Belgian band QUANTUM FANTAY has a history that go back more than a decade, and have steadily released studio albums from 2005 and onwards. A grand total of seven studio albums have been produced over the years. "Tessellation of Euclidean Space" is the most recent of these, and was released in the summer of 2017 through German label Progressive Promotion Records.

Instrumental space rock with a liberal array of sounds and effects is what Quantum Fantay provides, yet again. An instrumental, cosmic journey, with a slight taste of the exotic and arguably even jazz tossed in here and there. Music very much of the Ozric Tentacles variety, but as far as such ventures goes this is a quality one, an elegant, swirling cosmic journey for travels of the outer and the inner space. Obviously an album I have noted down as a merited check by anyone with an interest in the aforementioned Ozrics and bands of a similar kind.

Quantum Fantay is a psychedelic/space rock band (or, as they put it: liquid space rock) founded in Belgium at the turn of this century in 2002. As of August 2023, they have released a total of eight studio albums, each planned as a piece of introspection and rediscovery. Today I bring you a review of the seventh, at this moment chronologically anteultimate: "Tessellation of Euclidean Space".

From the opening track "Tessellate", the album starts with ancestral sounds that are mixed with typical 70s psychedelic rock arrangements, making use of the resource of introducing the instruments little by little, entering -with an almost completely built atmosphere and in such a short time- the flute and then the keyboards with riffs and more arrangements to authenticate it as true space rock. This track is sustained with great energy, with all instruments participating equally in a mixture of atmospheres and beats. The flute, as long as it is well executed, is always very interesting as a dominant element in some psychedelic instrumental sections, and this song is no exception. Many parts of this song are reminiscent of early Alan Parsons, ranging from his debut to "The Turn of a Friendly Card", in such arbitrariness as the sustaining of the base instruments to give power to sequences of notes that come and go. Tessellate is a song that bridges a lot, with an interesting virtuosity in the rhythm, as it is never suffocating but constantly changing. Those changes are guided by drummer Gino Verhaegen, who possesses a total lucidity, one might say. Considering that this is the song that introduces an instrumental album, it is clear that it is reserved in several respects to function as just that: an introduction. In that sense, it reminds me very much of the first section of Transatlantic's The Whirlwind, with many ideas staged, but without delving into any of them. To make this clear, I'll exemplify this by contrasting it with Rush's wonderful La Villa Strangiato, where there are very brief instrumental sections, but nothing left unsaid. Decent introduction by the Belgians.

"Manas Kavya" is the second track, and I dare say that it starts off much more interesting than the previous one, with a total protagonism of the keyboards that leads to full-on electronic progressive, with vibrant synthesizers. In the face of such energy that the experimental keyboardist Pieter van den Broeck manages and sustains, the flute is a little more overshadowed and shocking in its melodies. And it is in this second song, after the 10 minutes of the first, that guitarist Tom Tas has his first important moments, with fast but not risky plucking. The song flies: the fast line proposed by the keyboards and drums leave very little room to create and improvise, and I think this is where Quantum's musicians are exposed (but not in a bad light): the slower note sequences work better than the faster ones. The influence of the British band Ozric Tentacles is clear in the exotic melodic components of the Belgians.

And if we had talked about ancestral music before, now the concept takes on much more force: "Astral Projection", the third song of the album and the one that will close side 1, is an embalming of - justly - astral and existential sounds that coexist in a sidereal but drastic space and go back and forth between a guitar that continues without taking risks and a keyboard of greater flight. The drummer is, almost without a doubt, the best of the band in this work; he doesn't outgrow a single moment and sustains a cadence that, with slightly looser beats and pulses, could fall apart. Of course, one can't expect this music to work as a seesaw of tonalities or impacts, but some flashes of originality wouldn't go amiss, because although virtuosity is not a problem here in general, there are many spaces to fill and monotony is something that, in several moments, is closer than far away.

And so closes the first side of the album: an astronomical and one-dimensional experiment that plays a lot with the instrumental swings, but does not seek distinctive leaps, but rather to neatly draw a line that has no theoretical wells.

Side 2 begins with a four-part song titled "Skytopia", a fun and exciting opener in its "(A): Azure" division, with striking percussion and a Tom Tas that begins to draw what he didn't draw on side 1. As if Astral Projection had been deliberately quiet to propel the fragmented Skytopia, the group aims to concentrate the maximum degree of elevation in this suite of thicker atmosphere and more catchy progressions.

Moving on to the cut "(B): Laputa", tension suddenly builds and everything becomes a little more mysterious, with a more present guitarist and keyboards continuing to grow. Wouter De Geest keeps his bass active by rotating in different roles; sometimes acting as guitar, sometimes shadowing the drums and sometimes delivering effective lines. Towards the end of the track, there is a very interesting keyboard-drums-bass section that concentrates what is perhaps the greatest prebend of dynamism on the whole album, or at least so far.

The shortest section of the suite, "(C), Ignis Fatuus", is the one that comes to give a structural and even vigorous pause, letting the staggered sections rest a little so that the flute brings back some calmness together with the Egyptian chanting voices of Nette Willox, who also takes care of the few sections with saxophone.

And, a suite that would seem to end without any noticeable gradations, releases its last section entitled "(D): Empyrean", which picks up a little of the power of the first songs, with the aforementioned typical set-up and some very seventies-like plucking. De Geest plays the sharpest lines in these 6 minutes, giving a fantastic passage to what is perhaps the best portion of the whole album, where it seems that everyone was on the same pulse, with a spectacular and very enjoyable multi-instrumental jam. This last part of the suite is a seesaw of grooves, a firm motif to move to the rhythm of the music. The saxophone also has its most striking melodies here, as may be the case with other instruments, apart from those already mentioned. A phenomenal peak of efficiency.

And so we come to the short-lived song that closes the album, entitled "Anahata", which is, true to Tessellate's introductory and light-hearted character, a spiritual stamp on what was a relaxing but moving journey. The second gateway to this immersive journey with tinges of various genres such as jazz, electronic music, symphonic rock and more.

Quantum Fantay's discography seems to be always a construction in process, aiming in each album to leave windows open in order to think of each latest work not as the last, but as a subsequent one, as a brick that rests on top of one and waits to be succeeded by another. A band with very ambitious aspirations that certainly gives something to talk about and is among the most remarkable of the Belgian progressive scene.