TRURL

Trurl is a jazz fusion/progressive one man band formed by Glass Hammer keybordist and multi instrumentalist Fred Schendel. One album released so far in 2011 named Do not see me rabbit. This quite strange and intresting name was taken from a character of Stanislaw Lem's humorous short story collection - The Cyberiad. The music offered is quite complex and with many changes in tempo, jazz fusion with progressive elements thrown in, a well balanced and intresting release all the way. Schendel handle all instruments here, and is very good in what is doing quite virtuosic on many parts, I mean the drums and bass are really excellent besides his main instrument keyboards, never though if I didn't know that is one man band. The sound is fat and crisp clear, what elese a total winner to me. There are some ELP inspired keybords and Gentle Giant disonant complicated arrangements and in combination with the jazz fusion parts gives to the listner a very memorable album where each instrument really shines. Lenghty pieces some of them with enough room for virtuosity, the album is instrumental entirely with some sporadicaly short chants here and there. As I said the album is diverse, catchy and I guess will pleases both fans of jazz fusion as those more towards progressive rock, both palletes are covered in good manner and with elegant moments. Nice art work aswell. The album available at his bandcamp page at very low price. From me 4 stars for sure, quite diffrent from he does in his main band Glass Hammer, but as good if not even better then many moments with his mother band.

Do Not See Me Rabbit is a great example of a "grower"; when I first listened to it, I could produce an emotional response only to the last track (which, by the way, is a bonus track, so technically not even a part of this album).

But the things continued to steadily climb uphill from there. A couple of listens while driving, and particularly the one through headphones did the trick. Thus Do Not See Me Rabbit has been deservedly elevated to the "essential masterpieces" of the progressive rock (whatever it means).

I think most of the people will agree that the album is written, played, recorded and engineered with impeccable taste and a good set of technical skills. As for myself, I will give it extra points for meeting my special criteria of being uniformly good - no skippable tracks, no boring passages, no fillers, no irritating moments.

Four and half stars, rounded up to FIVE