CARTA MALABARICA

Modern-psych Travelogue Soundtracks

This is some "way out there" stuff! My own attempt to describe this may fall short, but I'm gonna give it a try. You might call Clessidra modern psych jams celebrating life itself, with world music flavors, experimental and nonlinear songwriting, electronica, and environmental intrusions. This is way more daring and more unusual than most post-rock I've heard, in a good way. It could have a hallucinatory effect on you if practice some active (undistracted) listening. I would suggest this is a great title to explore in bed, in the dark, and with headphones. Enjoy the cicadas and the other strange creatures of nature who introduce each song. At times, Clessidra recall a more electric version of Third Ear Band or Japan's Ghost, but such comparisons may not serve any of them fairly as all three bands are clearly unique.

Tuscany's Manza Nera Label seems to have stalled out during Covid. Hopefully they will return one day because their offerings are pretty damn cool. They describe their lineup of artists as follows: "our aim is to explore all the avant-garde sounds of the new millennium. From electronic music to post-rock, from stoner to noise, from experimental tape to jazz." Clessidra is an experimental sounds band from Quiesa, Italy, and they formed in 2009. Carta Malabarica is their excellent studio release from 2013. Per the band's liner notes, "Carta Malabarica is a title that evokes the Orient, geographical maps and notebooks of the first explorers of the globe. The album contains our passion for that mysterious exoticism, literary and geographical, exercised on us by real places wrapped in a certain legendary aura such as Tunguska, the Malabar region in India, Giza, Baghdad, Gobleki Tepe." Something of a musical travelogue.

Their style may begin with what feels like typical post-rock, but it is a livelier improvisation with higher, much more vibrant aspirations, I would say. And while it is a freeform style with plenty of room for improvisation, the pieces tie back into themselves in a very cohesive way. Some parts are more overtly formless while other sections see the guys drop into a clear groove and run with it, getting into jam band, psych-rock territory, but staying in no one mode for too long. Remember watching nature shows where they would show you a volcanic eruption and they would hold the camera on these bright orange molten pools of lava bubbling and spitting? "Tunguska part 2" would be the absolute perfect soundtrack to lay over such footage. Both it and "Ek balam" sound as if influenced by late '60s Floyd's most psych moments.

And I think it is these rather abrupt shifts between the (seemingly) formless sound and the more intentional rock components that make things so exciting. You never know where they're going next! But you do realize quite quickly that this is not the too-oft typical post-rock that latches onto one melancholic progression and rides it for an hour. While such single-mode ebb-flow can be great at times, this is a different landscape altogether, one that melds the worlds of trance, dance, and wonder perfectly---an expression of life and the places that inspire mankind. The overall result is a work of great beauty and imagination, equal parts restless and relaxing and intriguing. That band doesn't seem to have any recent activity, but we can hope that the celebration isn't over yet. Recommended. Note: Elisa Cortopassi deserves a special shout-out for the beautiful design of the CD packaging.

With only one studio album released in 2013, CLESSIDRA might already be relegated to Italian post rock history. Luckily this is a fascinating artifact, an all instrumental album with many influences from its principal sub-genre, but subtly incorporating mysterious and temptingly foreboding aspects of world music, chiefly from the middle and far east, as befits the real place names in the tracklist.

The rhythms are consistently the drivers here, accompanied by generally scant, almost minimalist guitar and keyboard touches best acquitted in "Gobekle Tepi", with "Baghdad's Battery" ,"Tunguska Part 1", and "Giza" being nearly of comparable standard. The keys often serve as another base instrument in that sense. Sound effects include canines, insects and human voices sans substrate, which form and dissolve as phantoms. Unfortunately one track ("The Kadath") is essentially a drum solo with equally atonal diversions, and "Ek Balam" is a failed attempt at weaving Frippian lead guitar into the end product.

While its legend is modest, I still recommended "Carta.." for those who enjoy post rock and world music and are tired of being force fed clumsy takes of both.