BIRDS AND BUILDINGS

The only thing on this album that i had a beef with on my first listen, was the vocals. They sound rather akward and confused, but after careful consideration i have realized that however they sound, they are perfect for this album. An operatic Jon Andersson/ Peter Gabriel style singer would simply have ruined it.

It it sounds like im fawning, thats because i am and so should you, with good reason. "Bantam To Behemoth" really is that good.

...and I don't say that often. It took me a couple of minutes to adjust to the avalanche of noise coming through my headphones upon listening to the first track of Birds and Buildings's debut album "Bantam to Behemoth." After getting used to the onslaught of sound somewhere in the middle of the song, I started the song over in my CD player. Now that I tuned my brain into Dan Britton's behemoth, I started the song fresh. It is lterally amazing what is going on in this song. It is incredibly complex and extremely intense. It redefines what is meant by a "wall of sound."

After the wild ride of the first track, songs begin to show a mix of mellowness, more of Britton's craziness, and some solid numbers mixing in ample amounts of jazz rock/fusion and symphonic prog, with an amalgam of other styles thrown in, making this a delightful eclectic listen. Comparing this band with others is almost pointless. There are some references to King Crimson, Magma, The Mars Volta, and even a little bit of Genesis, but that hardly seems to scratch the surface.

This album blew me away upon first listen. After repeated listens, many of the songs grew even stronger, but alas, a couple of weak spots began to show. The one that is most obvious are the vocals and their delivery. Their often drowned in the chaos, seem out of place at times, and are delivered in an almost mumbling spoken form. Generally they're incomprehensible and no lyrics were provided in the insert. By incomprehensible, I don't mean they make no sense, I mean they cannot be heard correctly. No big deal though, as the vocals are quite sparse. Overall, I don't think this one weakness brings down this masterpiece, but I only mention it for the sake of listeners that have issues with this.

But buckle up your seatbelts, because you will surely need them. It's like driving your 1975 Cadillac Eldorado into a supermassive black hole and anything that gives me that feeling deserves a worthy five stars. Nice job, Mr. Britton. I'm looking forward to the next B&B release.

Rating: 8/10

This debut from Dan Britton's project Birds and Buildings created quite a stir within the prog community upon its release. Britton is an American multi-instrumentalist who gained a minor reputation with his previous project Deluge Grander. However, Bantam to Behemoth is my first experience with Britton's work, so I don't have anything to compare it to. Heavy jazz-fusion describes much of the material, but an amalgamation of various diverse influences is displayed here, ranging from Genesis to King Crimson to Magma. I even hear some progressive metal influences, particularly in the song structure of the heavier tracks. Excepting the softer tracks, this album can almost be described as "'21st Century Schizoid Man' Meets Liquid Tension Experiment." The term "eclectic prog" fits Bantam to Behemoth perfectly; despite some flaws, it manages to be a compelling release full of exciting instrumentation, fiery musicianship, and inspired composition.

The opening track "Birds Flying Into Buildings" is a mind-blowing nine-minute blast of heavy fusion. Even the Mellotron in this song manages to be intense, and the keyboard and sax work is superb. It's impossible not to be fully attentive while listening to this. "Terra Fire" calms things down a bit. There's some solid guitar/sax interplay here, but this track also introduces what I consider to be the weakest aspect of this album: the vocals. Britton is a fantastic instrumentalist and composer, but he's no singer. The vocals here are flat and emotionless, and they're mixed into the background as if they don't want to be heard. "Tunguska" brings back the heavy jazz-rock, but with tuned-down intensity. The vocals are dull yet again, but a sublime keyboard solo makes this a nonissue. "Caution Congrates and Forms a Storm" takes a while to build up, with acoustic guitar and piano dominating the first half. It picks up the pace later on, with more excellent keyboard work, and even a cool bass solo. For the most part, though, this is an average track when compared to some of the better material on the album. "Chronicle of the Invisible River of Stone" is the mellowest track here, and may also be the weakest. It is by no means a bad song, but I think that Britton works much better with more intense and fast-paced material. The female guest's vocals here are just as unenthusiastic as Britton's. Things greatly improve with "Yucatan 65: The Agitation of the Mass." This is the best track on the album. A lot of it has a strong Middle-Eastern/Oriental feel, with flute and acoustic guitar en masse. The intense conclusion creates one of the best moments on the album. "Charkra Khan" continues with the super-charged jazz-rock, with an infectious groove to accompany the madness."Battalion" features some amazing jazzy piano and guitar playing. The drums are also particularly notable here. "Sunken City, Sunny Day" is a short Mellotron-laden concluding piece.

Dan Britton and company have created an excellent modern prog album with Bantam to Behemoth. As stated before, the influences are diverse and the material is eclectic, but this doesn't stop the album from achieving stylistic cohesion and a unique identity. However, there are flaws here that can't be ignored. First and foremost are the vocals. I honestly can't understand why this album wasn't kept entirely instrumental. Not only does this type of music not accommodate vocals particularly well, but the vocals themselves are flat and dull. They detract from the music despite the fact that they're practically mixed into nonexistence. The mellower and more folky tracks are another flaw. Britton simply isn't as talented when it comes to that type of music; he succeeds so much better within the context of intense Crimsonian jazz-fusion. Some composers are good at building atmosphere, but Britton is not one of them. Regardless, this manages to be an immensely enjoyable and rewarding release despite its flaws. I hope that this project has a long and bright future ahead of it.

I honestly hoped to enjoy this album quite a bit, because I read somewhere that this was very jazz-fusion inspired eclectic progressive rock. I don't read much from the jazz-fusion area on this album, but it does sound to me like a much more frantic and sax-strong Red-era King Crimson. There is some jazz influence here, but mostly of the post-bop variety. The production on this album is some of the worst I've ever heard. It sounds like they wanted to make this album sound vintage, but it came out sounding like vintage and recorded in someone's garage. The sparse vocals are buried so deep in the mix that whatever the lyrics are, they are completely incomprehensible.

This is a decent listen, but I wouldn't really recommend it to too many people.

Bantam to Behemoth is the debut album from Birds and Buildings, one of Dan Britton's many projects. For those familiar with Dan's other band, Deluge Grander, I feel that this is a logical bridge between their first and second albums. Not as symphonic as August in the Urals, but not quite as layered and intricate as The Form of the Good. For those not familiar with these bands, you can expect some pretty crazy and fast music.

This album in particular is at its best when the band is going a mile a minute, quickly trading off passages between the guitar, sax, and one of the many keyboard sounds. The opening track is by far the best to be found here, and is an incredible introduction to everything that the band can do. There is a really driving harmony played on a mallet- sounding keyboard, and a strong melody that gets tossed around between every instrument throughout its 9 minutes. The energy starts off high, and really never drops as the song weaves its way through its passages.

Smartly, not every track is like this; that would certainly be an overload. The next three songs present a lot of really different textures and feel from the opener, and it's impressive to see the range of the band. The middle three songs consist of slower developing passages, which serve as a nice break from the fast-paced songs that bookmark the album. However, they do start to drag a little, as the middle of the album takes up half of the time, and it seems long overdue when the energy really kicks back in. A couple of these songs actually sound like they would fit in better with another of Dan's projects, All Over Everywhere, which is not a negative point, but they sound a little out of place here.

In addition to this, although Bantam to Behemoth is largely instrumental, the occasional vocal passage does aid to break up the music and create diversity. Unfortunately, the quality of the vocals doesn't match that of the instruments, but luckily they're not pushed up so high in the mix so that they take away too much from the music they are over. Most of the singing is handled by Dan himself, but there is a female guest on one song, which is nice. The lyrical content is interesting, and if you're willing to put some time into deciphering it and the artwork, there's a cool little story to be found.

While Bantam to Behemoth may have been better without the middle tracks and less singing, that doesn't stop it from being one of my favorite albums. It has a lot of really great and exciting music, with something new to be discovered on each and every listen. This album is a great addition for any prog fan, and hopefully their second album can live up to the high expectations set by this one.

The music on the album is a very eclectic mix of progressive rock, prog folk and jazz rock/ fusion. I hear as different acts as Gentle Giant, Frank Zappa ( 1973-75), Kaipa and Genesis in the music, but it's hard to pin down one specific influence as the music is very diverse and intriguing. The variation is great and there are both beautiful symphonic passages, mellow prog folky ones and some really challenging jazz rock/ fusion parts too. The musicianship is outstanding on the album. Keyboards, saxophone, flute and clarinet colour the music in addition to the more regular rock instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums. The music is mostly instrumental and that's probably a good idea because when the male vocals occasionally pop up they sound a bit like a drowsy John Wetton. It helps a bit when they put some psychadelic sounding effects on the vocals but still the vocals are the weak link on the album. Chronicle of the Invisible River of Stone features female vocals which unfortunately don't do much for me either. Fortunately the songs are all of high quality and the vocals don't ruin my experience even though I wish the band would have chosen a more interesting vocal style.

The production is really well sounding. It's seldom that you hear an album from 2008 with a warm and "authentic" sound like this. Great production work IMO.

Despite my complaints about the vocals, Bantam To Behemoth is an extremely impressive debut album by Birds and Buildings and I really hope to hear more from this exciting act in the future. A 3.5 - 4 star rating is deserved.

The opening track "Birds Flying Into Buildings" lives up both to it's own name and that of the album. There are so many notes flying around it's impossible to believe that as a listener you don't feel lost - that as players the band is able to hold it all together with such skill. Yet this does not sound like a shred fest, like disjointed noise, but like a coherent, strong, amazing, jazzy, symphonic, keyboardy, saxy, sexy, dynamic, noisy, elegant piece of music. It's one of those rare tracks that are so strong, the rest of the album almost becomes irrelevant because it is already worth the purchase based on the one song.

You know one thing I loved about Yes? I loved that they had the balls to call a track "Siberian Khatru". I have no idea what that even means, but it sounds cool, the music is great, and you know there's a certain subset of people who, if they found out you were listening to a song called "Siberian Khatru", would have to hear it themselves just to get a glimpse, maybe, at what a Khatru is. There's a certain feeling associated with a cool sounding, yet difficult to understand, song name. Well, Dan must have thought so too, for this album is full of tracks whose name evoke that mysterious-yet-cool feel. Tracks 4-6 are especially impressive, with "Yucatan 65: The Agitation of the Mass" standing out (and reminding again of Yes' Total Mass Retain section in Close to the Edge).

Of course, cool sounding track names can easily become huge disappointments if the music doesn't live up to the mystique. Well, the music on this album does. It doesn't take long for the band to show that on top of the chaos that they are somehow in complete control of, they also know how to be beautiful, even delicate - often, at the same time as the chaos! - songs. Tunguska is an excellent example of this; while the music may be ever changing, the lines complex and never straight forward in their delivery, while ominous sounds abound, this track has an eerie beauty about it. It is also one of the better examples of Dan's vocals on this album, being recorded in such a way that they blend in with the instruments instead of standing above, a fact that gives them a unique feel. Dan's vocal abilities certainly aren't the most technically impressive, but Dan knows his own limits, so works with what he can do instead of pushing himself too far. The result are somewhat airy, layered vocals that really work well with the music.

Two other tracks that I find particularly worth pointing out are Chronicles of the Invisible River of Stone (featuring the lovely vocals of Meghan Wheatley, and probably the most beautiful track on the album) and Battalion (which features some amazing lyrics as well, my favorite in that respect, on top of being amazing musically).

The album is, from beginning until the somewhat surreal ending spoken-words of the last track, a treasure, a truly great listen, and in my mind the best thing Dan Britton has done so far.

Album's opener is absolutely great heavy symphonic fusion composition, melodic,complex, nervous, with perfect guitar on the first half, and fantastic sax melodic line contouring (a la Klaus Doldinger on early Passport albums). If album's compositions were like this, album would be a real masterpiece!

"Terra Fire" is good song, complex and melodic, with Dan's vocals (ok, vocals are not stronger element there). Less symphonic, more fusion, but this time with some mellow (or pop) elements. "Tunguska" starts as mix between later synth-pop Camel and new age,but soon become more complex,energetic. I still don't like this song too much (later Camel is far not my beloved band, plus same vocals and even some bombastic arrangements!).

" Caution Congregates and Forms a Storm " starts as ballade but continues as symphonic rock instrumental very soon. " Chronicle of the Invisible River of Stone" is more relaxed,even slightly melancholic song with female vocals. Reminds a bit some Oldfield songs (just a bit more complex).

On "Chakra Khan" music returns to zeulish sound of album's opener. Almost pure zeuhl composition, it still isn't so great as "Birds Flying Into Buildings", but just confirms, what is the band's strongest side. "Battalion" is zeuhl-influenced song,possibly not so original though.

"Sunken City, Sunny Day" ,album's closer, is down tempo keyboards-based symphonic/new age song, enough tasteful, but possibly not the best final for such great album.

In all, this album is great one, but very eclectic as well. Possibly, Dan Britton tried to attract too wide listener,adding so different compositions in one album. If all the album sounded as zeuhl influenced opener (and two more songs of the same direction), it could be a really great release for fans of zeuhl. Some other compositions are more symphonic/synth-based prog oriented, and usual such listener will hardly accept zeuhl or more complex jazz fusion.

In all cases, really good release. I will wait for the next one with real interest!