ENIGMATIC SOUND MACHINES

Review originally published at www.lazland.org and recreated here for my very good friends, Mr T Szirmay and Jeremie Arrobas.

In my recent review of Massimo Pieretti's class album, The Next Dream, I remarked upon how class musicians who guest on a work tend not to be wholly mercenary and will work on a project only if they feel it is worthy of their input. Class tends to be choosy.

Well, to those comments, we can unequivocally state that this applies to Enigmatic Sound Machines, who also have a knack of attracting exceptional talent to assist them in realising their musical dreams. For their third album, Imperfect Silence, they have recruited the class flautist & saxophonist Rob Harrison of Z Machine who is based a few short miles from Lazland HQ in South Wales, the return of legendary prog/fusion bassist Hansford Rowe of Gong and Gongzilla, as well as guitarist Alain Roig alongside French fret man Alain Bellaiche of Heldon and Richard Pinhas.

ESM is the project of multi-instrumentalist, and much else besides, Jeremie Arrobas and Thomas Szirmay, who has written oodles of music reviews over the years on Prog Archives, House of Prog, and latterly with a thousand followers as Prog Rogue on Facebook.

This album takes the duo further down the progressive rock path than the previous two. It is a work which will appeal to those, like me, who love symphonic, orchestral layers to their keyboard-led music. The themes are very relevant to the world in which we live in 2025, a tired one of endless confusion, stress, depression, hardship, fear but, ultimately, hope for a better future. I share that. I despair as often as anyone else at the seemingly endless march into historical irrelevance of Western democracy but will always pull myself up by the bootstraps and remember the "glass half full" mantra I have tried to live by all my life.

There are eight pieces of music on the album lasting about an hour. The project has just had the incredible honour of being signed by Progrock Essentials, a label with an increasing importance and impressive stable of artists. The digital version will be available on 1st June, with a physical copy 1st August. I am extremely happy for them. Both are wonderful people, talented artists, and this project is making some strong noises in our progressive world. Let's discuss it and play some music.

The opening track is a very strong contender for this website's "instrumental of the year" award, with a nice play on words in the title, In Perfect Silence. I think there is such a mysterious quality to this piece, ethereal, pulling the listener in, and, as such, is the perfect opener, awash with synths, effects, and the dear old mellotron. The pair show that they have not lost their inherent sense of melody and playful pop-infused rhythm, and the Hansford Rowe bass melody here is to die for, the soundscape taken to a stratospheric level by the flute. It really is quite a beautiful piece of music, the synth-guitar adding a rock sensibility. Superb and delicately moving in places.

The Distance Between Here & Now is an interesting play on words. It is a long track at eight and a half minutes. Bellaiche is immediately noticeable with some delicate fretwork, Harrison leading the melodic charge over the thumping drums, the first vocals telling an interesting narrative, with God crying a thousand tears when he created the subject of the words, only lovers capable of rescuing this world of ours, the feel of a story veering between despair and hope. It's a dramatic piece which stays the right side of dystopian, the flute swirling and cascading a la Anderson at his most brazen, before Harrison introduces us to his saxophone work which is deeply seductive, tuneful in the manner of classic blues rock of yore, the closing passage being something you could quite happily dance to whilst under the influence in a ballroom full of sound. Enigmatic, for sure. House of Shadows follows. After a traditional electronica beat, we are merged with a pretty set of notes, a sax then taking us on a journey of mystery and hidden meanings, shadows peering in a song which doesn't fall into the trap of descending into a doom loop but is thoughtful and in the choral voices rather pretty as well. I think this harks back to shared memories but wants to move on, this achieved when the sax marks a light and playful mood.

Wrapped in Black is, pardon the pun, a dark title, and the opening notes are slow, almost funereal, but still performed with a pleasing lightness of touch which enables one to listen with the smile on your face the subject has never known. Depression is a relentless pit of despair that humans can fall into, the sense of self melting away. The stark change in mood musically at the three-minute mark makes you sit up and stare at the speaker, the sax now deeply reflective, a relentless beat underneath. Bellaiche produces a guitar solo dripping with Americana, moody, sliding, eyes closed, concentrating on recovering self. A stunning piece of music.

Hallow is up next. This has the feel of the electronica pop rock we heard in the first two albums, but with a lush jazz fusion infused texture added by Bellaiche on his guitar, the sax parping along to the lyrical prayer to a leader, cult, party, the societal curse of the modern age; we seem incapable of allowing ourselves the freedom to determine our destiny, instead pandering to the modern media and political gods. This song has so much going on, blues, jazz, pastoral, electronica, quietly symphonic, and I think it is entrancing, the loop as we close swirling around in your head.

Haunted I believe references the voices within as opposed to things that go bump in the night, and Arrobas provides us with a deeply "haunted" vocal here which I can't help thinking of Collins on his Home by the Sea, from where I suspect the overarching theme might have taken inspiration. It is a different work, but the tone of these vocals is very reminiscent, disturbingly so, actually. Harrison provides us with a masterclass in how a sax plays as lead instrument, whilst all the time, the soundscapes are revolving between your ears, the closing section quietening down for the act of internal struggle trying to resolve itself.

Endless Beginning is the penultimate track. The sax is achingly sad on this track, with a sense to me of a conversation, even a row, between loved ones, with thumping notes underlining the saxophone discussion and diatribe, angry, raging against the machine, with a perfectly pitched piano holding it together. This is as close as the act have got to what we might call heavy progressive rock, and it is very good.

We close with an instrumental bookend, Red Forest, which after 1986 became the most contaminated woodland on earth following the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. It is the longest piece on the album, just a shade short of epic length. It is decidedly broody, and extremely well performed and produced, Arrobas really impressing here with his guitar work as well as his ability to produce a picture of a vast landscape once beautiful and unspoilt, but now a victim of the imbecility of man, the single piano notes so effective in painting a picture of despair, noises of the forest ghostly in remembrance of a once thriving environment, with two thirds of the way in, the entire track quietening down with the memories of the birdsong which once surrounded the senses, but as we close, the anger and determination led by the sax to try to reclaim, with Thomas then narrating the album themes, hallowed be thy name.

Progrock Essentials have signed ESM for a reason. They are very good, and this album is a very tangible progression on what was already impressive body of work. Very highly recommended, their website is at enigmaticsoundmachines.com

I don't give rating scores on my website, but for PA purposes, 4.5 stars. An excellent addition to any prog rock music collection.

This is the second album by Enigmatic Sound Machines, a band formed by multi-instrumentalist Jeremie Arrobas (Men Without Hats) and musicologist, researcher, producer, arranger, and writer Thomas Szirmay. Thomas and I have known each other for years, but until he sent me this album, I was not aware he was a musician as well. The two men went to the same school together in Montreal, attending many prog concerts in the early Seventies, but it was only recently that they started to record together. In the summer of 2023 Jeremie had the urge to start recording again, even though he had lost 80% of his hearing, so he turned to his old friend to be his guide and following the success of 'Telepathic Waves' are now back with the next release. The line-up is Jeremie (keyboards, lead vocals, guitars, bass, and electronic sound machines), Thomas (electronic sound machines, backing vocals, sonic shaping, and humour), Hansford Rowe (bass and fretless bass), Shane Hoy (guitars), Alain Roig (guitars), and Anna Arrobas (voices).

There is always a risk when being sent an album by a friend, as what happens if I don't like it? I remember girding my loins and writing a pretty brutal review some years back, and was quite relieved when I had an email back saying everything I had put in the review was totally fair. Not long afterwards there was a significant line-up change and the next album was much improved. But what about this? I had no idea what to expect, but even though there are two guitarists this is mostly an electronic album which moves between 70's/80's pop and prog. I smiled when I saw the DPRP review of their debut release as the obviously had similar views to mine, although also slightly different. What we have here is a band who take their prog influences from Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, then mixing in the more pop influences of Ultravox and Gary Numan to create something which at times straddles the different genres, and at others moves more one way or the other.

When I first started playing this, I really wasn't too sure what to think as this is not a style of music I generally listen to, but after a while I realised that whether I normally listened to this style or not, there was something about this which I was really enjoying. The changes in style can sometimes be quite severe, but never so much that the thread is not continued, and there is the surprise in never knowing quite what is going to come next. In some ways this feels quite a light album in that there is never a tremendous amount of depth, and everything seems to be happening at the same level, but at the same time there is the impression this is deeply thought out and constructed with a strong sense of direction and never meandering endlessly.

It is definitely a dated album in that it is firmly in the early Eighties, but whereas I truly despised most of the music when I lived through it (apart from metal and Marillion, I had yet to discover the rest of the underground prog scene) now we are this far removed I can honestly say this is a refreshing and totally enjoyable album. There was no need for me to be worried about upsetting Thomas, as this is a delight.