Next up... a battle of two greats! In previous rounds we did song samples, great PA's reviews, with this
round I wanted to do something a different. So I went outside PA's..
what do people outside of this site say about these albums.
First up...
Five Suns by Guapo
Guapo take their prog obsession and turn it into a
full fledged prog rock freakout experience on the frequently gorgeous
and overwhelming Five Suns. The sound and mood conjured within
the album’s eight songs call to mind a bunch (well, three in this case)
of 60’s acid-rock refugees teleporting into the present day, picking up a
random metal album or two along the way, all the while listening to a
drone compilation after having noon tea with The Boredoms.
The album’s raison d’etre is the title track, a sweeping 46-minute
epic divided into five seamless parts. You’re immediately encapsulated
in a swirling bed of persuasive, lolling drums, gentle piano key taps
and shimmery gongs. It builds, growing subtly louder, when all those
same elements, so inviting a few minutes before, suddenly sprout fangs
and you find yourself on the receiving end of an all out assault that
vanishes just as unexpectedly in a squall of feedback. A lone gong hit
ushers in a minimal keyboard line which introduces a full, yet lazily
paced exercise of bass and drum percussiveness.
And that’s just the first five minutes. Track one sets the tone of
the album; it’s practically an outline of what’s to come as Guapo takes
these same (multi) dynamics and stretch them to sometimes unfathomable
lengths. A propulsive rhythm will go on and on, with single minded
direction. Little distractions pop up from time to time: a lone keyboard
line, abrupt guitar noodling, a barely there underpinning rhythm. And
then once again, after you’ve settled into a groove built so
meticulously, it’s split open with some animalistic drumming, orchestral
organ or guitar histrionics. After being aurally slapped across the
face just so, the rupture repairs itself with the introduction of yet
another methodically crafted base for the next set of instrumental
incursions.
Five Suns is a journey, a long one. Full of twists, turns,
trapdoor exits, detours, blocked paths and indeterminate stretches of
road where the only end in sight is the vanishing point on the horizon.
It will take stamina if you want to undertake this. You will be
frustrated, thwarted when you think the culmination is at hand. You will
want to give up numerous times. Yet if you follow the trail to its end
point, finally able to look back though the immense amount of terrain
covered, an utmost sense of satisfaction will fill you, the knowledge
that you trudged on, made it to the end.
and against that we have..
UTotem by UTotem
a true fusion of 20th century classical with rock,
The CD opens with a loud crash--a piano cluster
accompanied by a drum hit. Pause. Two more crashes. Pause. Woodwinds
and electronics start appearing through yet more crashes. Chromatic,
Ligeti-like figurations appear. What's that-- tonality? Actually, yes,
because U Totem's opening track, "One Nail Draws Another" is
practically a survey of the last five hundred years of Western music.
20th-century classical music is by far the biggest influence, of course,
but there's also hard rock, a dash of prog, a bit of pseudo-Indian
sitar music, quotes from 15th-century religious music, and even Broadway
(singer Emily Hay sounds a little like a gentler Dagmar Krause, but a
lot more like the Fibonaccis' Magie Song, so her voice has a very
theatrical quality to it). Amazingly, composer James Grigsby manages to
unify these disparate styles into a cohesive, complex, catchy and
absolutely beautiful piece of music.
A word of explanation: U Totem
is a collaboration between the 5uu's, led by Dave Kerman, and the Motor
Totemist Guild, led by James Grigsby. The two take turns writing tracks
for the album, so that the odd-numbered tracks are by Grigsby and the
even-numbered tracks are by Kerman. For those of you familiar with the
5uu's, Kerman's music here is pretty much business as usual, although
more extended, less proggy-sounding (possibly due to the absence of
Yes-head Bob Drake) and with a more classical sound due to the
woodwinds. You get such typical Kermanisms as atonal rock-outs ("The
Judas Goat"), vaguely equine-sounding electronic noises ("Two Looks at
One End"), and long passages based on the careful, almost minimalistic
manipulation of short motivic cells ("Both Your Houses"). However,
there are also some real shocks, such as a truly bizarre passage in
"Both Your Houses" in which ex-UU Curt Wilson sings a lush, refined
melody while Emily Hay shrieks uncontrollably far in the background.
Nor would you necessarily know from listening to _Hunger's Teeth_ that
Kerman was capable of the delicate beauty of the flute solo that opens
the same song.
Good though Kerman's music may be here, the album is
really stolen by Grigsby. I'm not familiar with the Motor Totemist
Guild's music (yet), so I can't really compare, but it seems to me that
Grigsby simply has more breadth and imagination than Kerman. I've
already mentioned the 15-minute opener "One Nail Draws Another", and
almost as impressive is the equally long "Vagabonds Home", whose
apparent aimlessness resolves after a few listens into a beautiful
motivically-integrated piece whose flirtations with tonality are made
all the more powerful by the way they fade back into the atonal language
that is the norm on this album. The brief "Dance of the Awkward"
sounds pretty much like what you might expect, and "Yellow Umbrella
Gallery" is a setting of texts in multiple languages about "pretentious,
highfalutin' ideas about what's artistic" sampled, Negativland-like,
over a shimmering and unsettling groove laid out by the rock instruments
and built on by the classical ones. So, 4 stars for Kerman, 5 for
Grigsby, and 4.5 for the overall whole.
A bit of buying advice: If
you're coming from a rock/prog direction and curious about the "new RIO"
bands, I'd advise you to check out Thinking Plague and the 5uu's
first--those bands are really rock with a strong modern-classical
influence, whereas this seems more like modern classical music with a
strong rock influence. If you're already a fan of those bands and want
more of a challenge, you should definitely check this out--it requires
more listens and more careful attention, but it grows on you with each
listen. (It's still growing on me, in fact.) And if you like
20th-century classical music, you owe it to yourself to listen to this
avant-rock masterpiece.