ELEPHANT9 WITH REINE FISKE: ATLANTIS

I met the elephants of Elephant9 thru fellow Norwegians Motorpsycho, with which they share several collaborators and a penchant for English word-play, although musically the bands are quite different. Elephant is free-form ("jazzy"), keyboard-dominated (in fact, their line-up doesn't feature a guitarist, although a guitarist works with them sometimes) heavy jam band. There are almost no self-evident melodies or grooves to speak of, except maybe for the foundation of the first part of Freedom's Children. A few tracks are quiet, or have quiter sections (the ominous, but slow-building first part of Atlantis, for example), but the rest amounts to white-noise thunder to my gentle ears. Definitely an acquired taste, and I dare someone to tell me they can take this in just one sitting.