MUTINY IN JONESTOWN

I don't remember which albums these samples were from, but surely not this one.

Providence is the city where Lovecraft spent almost all his life except a couple of years in NY when he was married to Sonia, a woman he previously ghost-writed for. This album contains a short track which is not bad but seems to have been added to fill a LP length. The over 30 minutes epic, which is shipped in two separate parts from Bandcamp, is inspired to one of the most scary novels written by HPL, and one of his last.

The music this time has the dissonances needed to make it sound weird enough, even if pure neo-prog moments appear here and there. For me, concentrating on the music and its qualities without thinking to the sensations that the novel is able to give, is very hard. I'll do my best.

First of all, a multi-instrumentist usually has a weakness, at least with one instrument. Dennis MONTGOMERY, even if not a virtuoso (at least not in this album) is able to play all the instruments at the same good level. There are good ideas and the voice is not very powerful but especially in this epic he sounds like GENTLE GIANT. The darker moments are more in sintony with the story, especially the first minutes of the second part of the suite, when his rocker soul is temporarily offline. I's in those moments that I hear a connection with Gentle Giant.

When the rocker soul emerges...well, it's rock.

The second part of the epic, so the last 20 minutes are the best part of this album, at least for me, because in some moments it's able to partially recreate the atmosphere of the novel. If you don't know the novel, please believe me: being so weird is everything but easy.

So I'm happy to have actually had no voice in the evaluation of this project for addition. I was wrong and this album, currently the only one Mutiny in Jonestown's album that I've listened carefully enough for a review, deserves to be featured here. The vocals aren't the best skill of this artist, but fit perfectly with this music and this subject.

Never stop at the first impression.

The exciting thing about this compilation is the tracks do not appear on any other album currently available or previous compilation so are unveiled here for the very first time - thus making the metaphor presented by the cover image of "milking it" not exactly true (or at least no more true than any compilation album). The songs are presented in the order of most recent to oldest so in a way, besides being a compilation of some of my favorite Mutiny in Jonestown songs, the album can be experienced as a historical time capsule of the band, beginning with where they ended up and ending where they started. In fact, the final two songs, "AllHallows Eve" and "In the Walls of Eryx" are pulled from the very first Mutiny in Jonestown album, recorded live in the studio back in December 1987. These two songs represent the first recordings of the band about 6 months after forming on 7/28/87.

I never rate compilation albums very highly because they always sound like a disjointed group of songs with no concept or underlying theme. This compilation is no exception, though the fact that it moves chronologically backwards by design through the history of the band (beginning with a song released in 2014 and ending with a pair of songs released in 1987) allows me to overlook that point.

My initial inclination was to give this album 2 stars as it will be most appreciated by those already familiar with the band and interested in it's historical evolution. However, after listening to the album a couple times last night in it's entirety, I decided this is a 3 star effort as the songs do stand apart from the historical significance of the band, and could be appreciated especially by those interested in the more guitar heavy style of prog rock, or at least rock prog!

So definitely not just a good album, it has a lot to offer, NO it's not as common as hamburger fish & fried chicken chips !!

For the anecdote, Porcelaine, one of the pretty lot of "earworms" one can find in MIJ (though definitely not elevator music's earworms !! best, Wish to Wish, Arianna are in the list ) reminds me of Depeche Mode ! I'm less into the two last tracks, otherwise I dare consider this one standing out as my nr one by MIJ (and what I enjoy in it I prefer to a huge mountain of other projects !).

The spine-chill at moving from lyrics section to lush string MTron + organ in Dagon at 3'19 is nothing short of MTron use at it's best. My fav parts apart from that are: Astrophobos 1'42 and 6'25 organ solo. Polaris 10'35 short but perfect. Despair doesn't make me despair at all... but no dameon I completely enjoy that piece and won't jump over parts to listen to the most exciting ones !

I guess reading some Lovecraft will deepen my listening experience.

The Crimson King's review will tell more !

The album was recorded in April of 1995 and consists of experimental improvised pieces based on the processing technique called looping. Around that time Lexicon had just released one of the first large scale commercially available digital loopers which they called the "Jam Man". The idea was you could create "loops" by layering section upon section of guitars, keyboards, vocals, drums, sound effects or whatever you wanted. Then you could record additional loops built up in the same way and move among them in real time by use of a foot pedal creating a song structure built of very odd parts.

These experimental pieces were all based on improvised foundations created by layering and looping guitars and vocals. A rock rhythm section of bass and drums was then added to give a little structure to the chaos (or, as HP Lovecraft might call it, "the vortex of madness"). Finally, a little post recording processing was added to give an unusual sheen to create the finished project.

Improvisation is a very hit or miss approach which usually falls short but occasionally can hit one out of the park. On this album, the home run track is "Mary Wants a Cordless Drill", which sounds strangely like something Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band would have put on their 1969 showcase of madness, "Trout Mask Replica".

The story of the name of this track is amusing. I was working at a high tech company back in 1995 and every Christmas they put a "giving tree" in the lobby. It was a Christmas tree with labels on it that local charities placed to let us know what local people in need would like for Christmas, but couldn't afford. One day I was looking through the labels deciding which one I would take when I ran across a label that simply said, "Mary wants a cordless drill". I couldn't have made up a better song title if I'd tried! What makes this improvisation so successful is when the vocals break into the melody of Silent Night while the background splits into several threads, some trying to follow Silent Night and others continuing in Beefheart inspired blissful ignorance.

Unfortunately, every track on this EP isn't as successful as "Mary Wants a Cordless Drill", but hey, that's what you get with improvisation! This album is really the definition of a 2 star, for collectors/fans only.

Other bands covered on the album include Black Sabbath, REM, Twelfth Night, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and the Rolling Stones. By far the most frequently covered band on the album is the Beatles with 7 songs. This is hardly a surprise, as I mentioned in an earlier review that whenever I hit a wall and all inspiration vanished, I'd turn to covering Beatles songs until they'd blast me through writers block.

Rating this album is a difficult task. Not difficult about deciding a fair rating based on the quality of the songs and the PA rating guidelines, but difficult in the sense of a feeling of disappointment. Why? Because no one will likely ever hear the album due to current copyright laws covering BandCamp, youtube, SoundCloud, etc. Take youtube for example, for some inexplicable reason, people are allowed to upload entire albums that they obviously did not create or own the rights to with no repercussions.

True story: I uploaded a Mutiny in Jonestown cover of "Day Tripper" a few years ago and within weeks youtube sends me a message that I've been flagged for violating copyright. Then they tell me it's ok because they have an arrangement with the copyright owner who will allow me to violate copyright as long as I allow them to embed advertising in my video.

So let me get this straight, you are saying I'm breaking the law and I'm on a list, but it's ok if I let you monetize my video? Great. And what happens when Google changes this copyright policy without notifying me? All of the sudden myself and everyone on your list becomes a proven copyright violator? No thanks.

My wife owns a marketing and social media management business. I've seen first hand what happens to her clients that pull an image off Google without owning copyright or having permission and put it in their social media. They get a letter (usually from Getty Images) that basically states: We've discovered you're using one of our images without permission. We don't care if you've already taken it down or promise to do so. You used it and we documented it. We've included an invoice for $1,000 which is due immediately. If payment is not received in 10 days we will begin legal proceedings and sue you for much more.

I know I've gotten way off topic for an album review, but I thought it was relevant to the process of determining a fair rating for the album (and also it might prevent some of you from "getting on the list" with youtube or sued by Google/Getty Images :-)

Anyway, I pulled my cover of "Day Tripper" and have never uploaded anything I didn't create since. For that reason, and the fact that nearly half of the covers are considered rock rather than prog, I'll sadly give the album 2 stars. If the current double standard of music copyright law regarding cover songs someday changes and I can upload this album to BandCamp, I'll do so and happily upgrade my rating.

During the 1988 to 2014 time frame covered by the anthology series, there were an additional 8 Lovecraft songs that were not included on this album. Most were shorter in length than the songs selected or depicted some of Lovecraft's very obscure tales or poems so were passed over.

"At the Mountains of Madness" was the first large scale Lovecraft adaptation taking on his full length novel of the same name (Lovecraft only wrote 2 novel length works, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"). This musical adaptation goes through many sections: some vocal, some instrumental. Guitar solos are frequent, but this album is mostly driven by the unusual sounds of the newly released (at the time) Yamaha SY22 vector synthesizer. The SY22 specialized in creating background washes that morphed over time between 4 separate sounds. It presents quite an unusual atmosphere and supports the events of Lovecraft's story of an Antarctic exploration and the unpleasant discoveries it brings very well.

"The Festival" was recorded a year later and was both the centerpiece of the next album, "The False Hollow Phantoms of Beauty" and the longest piece the band ever completed at that time clocking in at 24:59. It of course moves through many scenes and atmospheres staying close to the spirit of Lovecraft's original story. It's pretty much recorded with the same equipment as the previous "At the Mountains of Madness" but with one major difference. The studio had been upgraded to the newest Tascam recorder which included what's called an effects send channel. This technology upgrade enabled the band to better interpret the chaos of Lovecraft's original words, creating a musical world which mirrored the madness of his tale.

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is possibly one of Lovecraft's best known works. Setting the story to music required an extensive lyrical interpretation which took nearly 6 weeks to complete. By this time, the band had what was for all intents and purposes, an actual mellotron, if not a virtual one. It was a meticulously sampled mid 70's Mellotron M400 (the white, single keyboard model). Each of the original's 35 keys was separately sampled and the entire keyboard loaded onto a Yamaha Motif. The most well known mellotron string and choir sounds are frequently used throughout the piece. There are plenty of vocals to tell the story and the tale ends with one of the best guitar solo sections the band ever recorded.

As I've mentioned before, I don't rate compilation albums at 5 stars. In the case of this anthology, I'm seriously tempted to break my own rule, but will stick to my guidelines giving this a well deserved 4 stars.

This compilation is also interesting in that for every song firmly based in the world of prog there appears to be a matching song firmly based in the rock genre. The album both begins and ends with rock heavy songs like "All's I Want", "Dog Food" and one of the very first Mutiny in Jonestown songs, "1000 Below". This one was one of the bands' very first songs, written in 1987 and a staple of the shows which produced the first two live albums. Never before recorded for a studio album, it was made available for the first time over 25 years after it was written on the album, "14".

Many of the rockiest songs on this anthology are from albums out of print due to various reasons which makes this worth acquiring from BandCamp if you enjoy Mutiny in Jonestowns' style of rock mixed with prog. The prog songs here are some of the band's best, but are cherry picked from albums already available on BandCamp. Due to the nearly equal rating of rock to prog songs, this compilation would definitely be most enjoyed by current fans looking to complete their collection or those curious to hear an overview of the some of the best rock songs in the bands discography. For that reason, I'm giving this album 3 stars.