AWAKE & GALLO

The truth is out there! An album for fans of the X-Files, so don't blame me if this creepy burnt offering scares the living daylights out of you. Awake & Gallo have the notable distinction of being the only Krautrock band ever to emerge from Greece, although not a total surprise when you consider that Germans weren't exactly flavour of the month there during World War Two after heavily bombing the Greek port city of Piraeus, along with the Nazi Fokkers machine-gunning civilians from the air. The list of Nazi war crimes against Greece is longer than the Unter den Linden in Berlin. Thankfully, these days when the Germans invade Greece every summer, it's only to be the first to lay their beach towels on the sun-loungers beside the hotel swimming pool. Anyway, enough about the war. Awake & Gallo are tripping the light fantastic with a haunting, LSD-inspired album that takes you on a mind-blowing odyssey into a shadowy demon-haunted world of psychedelic purple haze that drifts in and out of the consciousness like a bad dream - or like some dark nightmare vision in The Twilight Zone. Beware! This spooky, atmospheric album of phantasmagorical delights will wrap its warm tendrils around your heart and grab you by the throat. It may even be enough to give Mulder & Scully the creeps and freak them out. "In Search of the Universal Truth" is destined to seductively charm its way into the inner recesses of your brain and not let go. This is sonic nirvana for the mind, body and soul. It's an ideal album for listening to late at night during a thunderstorm with the lights turned down low, as you drift gently away into the arms of Morpheus. Just make sure you lock all of the doors and windows first and remember to check under the bed. Awake & Gallo's second album sounds even more dark and sinister than the first - hardly surprising with a title like "Ultra Violence World" - but their third and final album is Prescription Only, so you'd have to order it from your local medical practitioner.

Not sure if they have made this creation under a subliminal perception against atomic bombs but via not only the monotonous sleeve reminding us of Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or corpses piled up like a mushroom cloud) but also their inorganic devastated sound horribleness, I as a Japanese, would get strongly impressed with their serious sense of crisis by this album, and simultaneously possess a massive hatred against such a dark, dangerous world situation. At first let me say their interpretation with sound variation be much appreciated. This impression via their synthesizer is incredibly terrific and hypersensitive enough to drive me crazy from the beginning of a horrible ambient opening.

Even slow, steady sound streaming like the second shot "First Dawn" cannot give me safe nor sound. Full anxiety is here ... what is happening around me currently and how we would get to be in future. Small bird's chirps would notify me of a vacant world under the grey sky. The following titled one is kinda killa. Quiet, dry-fruity electronic heaviness creates indolent sullen inner space. Leave myself into such a Fantasia and keep on depressing ... this track aka the masterpiece of this album is worth doing so. "The Little Man" might have walked around and around the burned-out ground I imagine, along with depressive downtempo sound delivery.

The last 4 songs reminding me of something like Magdalena Solis are not bad too. Especially the seventh "Cosmic Cry" is filled with pop, catchy melodic essence and cynical sound dissection (great) based upon tapping percussive rhythm, and this track can make me smile for a little little while. The epilogue "Forever" exactly is in the same vein of The Dark Side Of The Moon and pretty suitable to be called as the dark side of the world ... one of my faves indeed. Not comfortable but pretty provoking and understandable this whole world is, for the reason above mentioned. A decent creation, at least for me.