1ST

Indonesian band Discus presented here four years before releasing their surprising and exceptional .tot licht-album already a quite remarkable and very good debut with some excellent tracks. But I can't write this withing putting a "but" and let me try to explain this. Maybe I did a mistake in listening to their second before this one or the reason is that I'm not favouring light and happy-sounding bar lounge jazz and I've to say I can't listen to pop tunes at all without getting alienated and unfortunately about one third of this disk contains some tracks sounding like that. The opener, "Doc's tune" and the final one are excellent and versatile Prog pieces offering a brilliant blend of driving jazz rock, complex symphonic Prog with influences by Gamelan music and some touch of Zappa and metal at the same time. Not really groundbreaking I would say and not that adventureous yet as on the follow-up but there isn't any question about the fact that this is very interesting music we get offered here. "Condissonance" and "Violin Metaphysics" are still very good tracks as well. The former one is a kind of classical ensemble music played on acoustic guitar, bass clarinet and violin which is at times crossing slightly the line into oddity bringing names like Gentle Giant or Gryphon into one's mind. I much prefer this one to the similar "Music 4.5 Players" of their second one I've to say. "Violin Metaphysics" then are quite interesting soundscapes played on violin. Still best one of the remaining tracks is "For This Love" which is not really Prog but rather soft and relaxed jazz with lovely female vocals (not really my favourite music style). "Dua Cermin", "Wujudkan!" and "Anugerah" are more or less jazzy Asia-pop songs in my view, the kind which is usually being played in Asian restaurants as background music. Certainly there are some more interesting sections thrown in but those few ones are too much diluted into this shallow pop mix and it's quite hard to resist for pressing the skip button.

As a summary I can say that this one was for sure a very good debut of a promising and unique band with highly talented musicians but not (yet) that great as its successor. Anyway I think it's an interesting additional purchase for everyone who owns already their second one. Not really essential I would say but I'd add an extra half star if possible!