THE SCREW-LOOSE ENTERTAINMENT

Disen Gage are an excellent new band from Russia. They formed in 1999 in a Physics institute and soon started making a reputation as great musicians and composers. After several years of jamming and focusing on their studies, they released The Screw-Loose Entertainment in 2004. The album presents a quirky blend of jazz-rock, avant prog and heavy prog in the vein of King Crimson. Strangely, they use no keyboards. All music is created by two guitars, bass, and drums. Most of their compositions are short, and concise. The album presents a great diversity of sound and influence, with no filler and nothing extra. Every song sounds fresh and different, this album will not bore you. It is accessible and complex/musically interesting at the same time and should be enjoyed by all progheads.

Solaris opens the album with a couple minutes of spacy electronic noodling before developing into a melodic composition with excellent spacy guitar soloing over a heavy riff-driven background.

Komar is a quirky song with great diverse drum work, with plenty of changes and drum rolls throughout. Dense complex rhythm section provides background for some screaming solos on top. The guitar work is excellent; the band focuses on feeling and coherence rather than sole technicality or speed.

Augenapfel continues with great drum work. The pace of guitar solos is faster but still very emotional, there are a couple very cool and touching flamenco-style solos. I only wish the piece was longer.

Kategeriin is a heavier piece, with a darker mood. the bass riff is trembling and some creepy narratives and electronic samples are applied on top. The ending is somewhat un-climatic, it fades out and I'd rather have them put a period. I hate fadeouts.

Arabia has a similar bass theme as Kategeriin, quirky and fast. The lead guitar has, as the title implies, a certain eastern feel to it. It gets epic, with a nearly nearly heavy metal riff during a couple interplays that provide some diversity to the song.

Chinagroove #17 starts off sounding similar to the previous track, before a change in the bass groove and some fun guitar effects.

Witchtanz ends the theme common through the previous three songs. It has a pretty avant garde sound, with very diverse drum patterns and constantly changing guitar grooves. Excellent, very diverse track.

Latino is a very appropriate name for this song. It has a funky Latin melody that's very catchy and I'm sure can be used for a salsa dance. Excellent, feelingful piece with great drumming and guitar work.

Jewboilove is pretty long slow paced, with plenty of diverse guitar solos, and even a sax solo, the only appearance of saxophone on the album. The drumming is complex, constantly changing patterns and tunes add to the diversity.

Waltz closes the album with, well, a waltz. Calm, melodic song with pretty danceable melody.

Overall, excellent album, very emotional and warm at that. Excellent musicianship, intelligent composition - any prog fan should appreciate this. To older progheads looking for good modern prog, here's one to check out! 4.5 stars.

Very good and promising new instrumental Russian Band.They mis Crimso-influenced math-rock with folk and even tribal tunes,add some spacy and improvised spots,but never lose the sense of melody...some tracks even can be regarded as catchy!!! Perfect musicianship, recognizable style, great quality of the whole record - they know how to please a Progger! Nevertheless, they're also aware of ways of SHOCKING a Progger - you can find here dozens of bits when your mouth would be widely opened from in surprise, believe me. Highly recommended! DISEN GAGE promise to release their third one later this year ("Libertage" was mostly an avant experiment made on 90% from free improvisations of the band).When you're asking what will be the greatest discovery for Porg in 2007, I'll take a risk to propose RUSSIAN PROG , varied and interesting, on this role. Enjoy!!!

Very Disengaged ...

Wow! This is the debut of a very interesting russian band - excellent and very professional with great interaction between the musicians. Not to ignore - their music is often refering to KING CRIMSON and remembers me at 'Discipline' a lot. No keyboards and no vocals (excepting some spoken words). The twin guitar work is dominating the 10 short songs - sometimes similar to Fripp/Belew. They combine this also in a special way with other styles - Psychedelic - JazzRock/Fusion - jamming and a unique russian flavour.

The opener Solaris is convincing with a funky fusion bass - beginning with a psychedelic intro and then gliding into a groovy rocking part. Komar contains excellent drum work and Augenapfel is a very dynamic JazzRock track. Kategeriin first of all sounds like a country rock song and consists of many freaky effects - fabulous! Arabia is a tremendous ride - very much fusion again. Latino and Waltz are exactly what the song name promises. And Jewboilove is another very freaky song with saxophon accompaniment.

'The Screw-Loose Entertainment' is a fresh and ambitous work - very interesting to hear. Highly recommended to CRIMSON progheads and also to Jazz Rock/Fusion fans.

"Whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should." - Anonymous

If not the most original this is definitely the most interesting experimental music that I have heard since Primus hit the scene in the early 90`s. It has the wackiness of the afore mentioned and the complexities and depth of King Crimson and after hearing these guys for the first time I simply couldn`t believe there were no keyboards! They get all the wierdness and kaos you could ask for out of two over driven guitars, a drum kit and a bass guitar with the occasional appearances of congas and a saxophone. One of the effective aspects of the twin guitars is that both guitarists, each with a different approach to their playing, are freed up to experiment with and develop each piece more freely due to the absence of vocals throughout 99% of the work.

Following an ambient intro on the first track, Solaris, accomplished by a mesh of guitar effects we ascend into some heavy rythm riffing over which we hear Frippish guitar screaming which leaves no doubt of the 80`s King Crimson influence which pretty much continues throughout the entire album. While the complexities, such as tight accented drumming, solid bass playing and bizarre yet sophisticated interaction between the two guitars, become more evident as the album moves on so do other influences.Tinges of Krautrock can be also be heard on Kategeriin, a track with great dynamics and rythmn which even features some tripped out vocals that remind me of early deranged Guru Guru voicings. Later on we also hear some effects that you would expect on a Neu! album blended in with latino stylings which is probably the most conventional track on the whole CD and is entitled unsuprisingly, Latino. And this one even gets wierd in places! Augenapfel tends to get a little funky and can sound like Canadian fusion band UZEB in parts while also having a very latino flavour.It also includes some fine flamenco-like guitar lines.The real gem on the album though, is the second track, Komar, with a very, spooky, almost frantic pulsating aura to it with a lot of freaked out Frippish guitar effects. The final track entitled Waltz is just that and conjures up images of a weird masquerade party with dancing manequins.

All comparisons aside, these guys use their influences very wisely and every track is a special witches brew. Despite all the influences , the ingredients on each track cleverly flow into one another and there are absolutely no grey areas, just suprises. They sound tight yet they have a certain freeness to their sound. The one word track titles also contribute to the wonderful strangeness of this ambitious musical accomplishment. Play LOUD!

Bullets and chalks of dark essence, craft sequentialized music, talkative voluminous spirit, calibrated rock power, influenced music over-exceeding no longer than their timing, powerful progressive suspense, generally unquestionable, but rarely mentionable as well, effortless creative writing and composition, significant appeal of rock flavors, dark art and meaningful psychic-tones, spontaneous reactions to the world of sound atmospheres and deep colors, insensible reflexes of aestheticism, in the good, mannered and disengaging perspective. This sounds, reluctantly or fruitfully, by caprice or by a real pleasure, in a touching modern choice or by a living alternated classic perspective, in means of sound or melody, rhythms or melancholy, drunk passion or visible virility, torus reflection or constant degradation, full fledges or concupiscences, it sounds like a prog rock gem, finding means in the charismatic personal music stress, it brings out the meaningful strength of impressive music notation, even with the reason to have the impressive aura of mind-drive, and it gives satisfaction to music, the rustic personal feeling or the peaty modern-permanent orientation resembling art, constant petulance or the admissible high adrenalin. It makes out things sound perfect, over-resounding and astoundingly. For the band to suffer actually the anesthesia of hidden messages into a resembling visible soft-connection and a bit of eclectic instinctual taste.

The type of music that strays into a dark passion and a vital groove-art sound isn't one of my normal choices, yet I know the characterized style: the powerful instrumentality oldens out every possible stringencies to weak motives and superficial exhibitions, giving instead a powerful motive of the band being in sense with its own spirit and its own craft; mostly, by hand and memory, but by the music-imagination too. Following up is the music taste, which likes to ochered a lot of tasteful music, inspirational motive, heart-taking dynamics and releasing atmosphere; the ensemble portraits a vital linguine touch, leaving aside the influences and the colored fondled equilibrium; magic sprouts like it would be out of a stretching pain or a psyched confound, but it also ease a warm, corroding phonetic experimentalism. Last is the emotion of such a discrete hard music, bringing out the fragmented impressions and the trivial-isms of polychrome rock. Yet making a spectacle out of the passionate music, the meager vincible intricacy or the powerful filching-tone. Yes, this craft of a music perspective (the powerful personal thoughts and the direct distinct ideas remains at hand, for the best of the rhythm) is a blend of the alternative prog (meaning the various ways of sizing up a beat and a dandy eclecticism), powerful rock (in all means instrumental) and various reasoning (in a warm, condensed and immortalized scattergun). Making a delightful, intrinsic and conspiratorial high-rise.

Disen Gage and their debut album is quite a peaking rise of everything mentioned as the storm connection and the tight-inviting excellent craft. Mentionable is the personal expression, made out of fighting habits and inspired "sensibilities". The edge of every nuance is hard and promising raveling, the Crimson color is though a too exacerbated remark. True, Fripp-rock is a measurable character, in the mood of minimal being impeccable, sound-terning being of way of significance and the loops of guitar (having a symphonic sound that a ragged garage-ominous touch, if you ask me) being a total recall of good classic moves. Ambition over influence rules, like in any grooving appearance, but the mature power is my happiest discovery in this band, deep inside they known to resonate many things. Incredible things. Simple things. Jazzy drifts sound apathetically, yet their made of a natural harmony. Post-ambiance are shortly cornered in the hard, but not grueling rock-roam. The weird complexity gives shine and a burst of oxide diversity. Last, the fusion (dark, grey or bleaching) has a realist destruction, yet shape every single piece into a switching twist. Least we can feel flamboyant soft moves (in real need these days to show some affection, after all), the rustic or folklore dance-ticks (nothing serious) or the frizzing acid language of the instrumental guitar-toppings. The mind-boggle of this sizzling arrangement is low-high contrasting, the touch of analogies is rather unsubstantial, the quirk side of music doesn't actually, the passion is just a living match of splendid punch work; the left melodramatic, adrenalin or alternative drench of this music stays behind the powerful dribbling essence of music, rhythm and hard-pads, as well as behind the gust of storm themes, dredge causes, mood breakups, sound-splashes, rock-bevels...and screw-loose entertainments.

Normally a standard tasteful, graceful and electrifying modern rock ensemble/modern premonition music plethora. But, more enthusiastically, the trust of Disen Gage, on prog stage, on hard pilgrimage and on a no-refusal excellent habit, is much better coted and much interestingly sipping. Being quite an inspiriting gem-like massive music thrall (and an exhausting euphoria). Of the best kind.