HIPPO CRISIS

One of Sébastien Gramond's many 'jam' albums. At the expense of proper and striking songwriting, this French musician decides to make a more drawn out excursion in 'Hippo Crisis'. An album that feels more like a set of different groove-based improvisations than anything else, Gramond very well may have set himself up for a failure here, were he not such a good performing musician.

The album here is essentially broken into two parts, the first seven songs (which each are quite short on their own) and the final song, a half hour dive into 'psychotic' jamming. The album structure aside, it doesn't quite feel as if any of these compositions have much going for them. Besides my personal favourite here 'A Certain Misdoubt' which is clever enough to build around a groove, much of the music here feels like somewhat aimless jamming between Gramond's drumwork and his skills at the keyboard. Certainly something I have heard Sébastien Gramond do before.

The music here is recorded fairly lo-fi, but all instruments are more or less clear to the ear. The most important instrument here is the keyboard, in which Gramond takes into a variety of different interesting sounds and tones for variety. This is possibly the greatest strength of 'Hippo Crisis', although there are quite often times where the music will feel like a lounge soundtrack over a progressive rock record. As has been said, it is the musicianship of Gramond here that shines through, as it does with all of the man's jam albums. With distorted basswork that sounds like it could have been taken from King Crimson's 'Red' album, jazzy drums and great keyboard soloing, Gramond's performance skills pick up the pieces somewhat, although the album still feels as if it could have been much more effective with some more thoughtful composition to it.