DESCENDING

Still a young band, Norwegian band Gargamel has abundantly proved with this sophomore effort that it is still full of vitality, freshness and creativity. "Descending" builds upon the sort of retro-prog sound elaborated in the debut release "Watch for the Umbles" and gives it a powerful twist toward the rougher edges of its essential core sound. With a reduced permanent quartet formation that includes new names in the bass and keyboard departments, Gargamel state a denser approach to its typically Scandinavian vibe. The title track fills the first 10- minutes of the album, focusing on somewhat caustic moods, something like a softened Areknamés mixed with touches of later years Anekdoten and Metrognome's spacey trends. The instrumental expansions are properly featured among the sung passages are not excessively complex, but they manage to build a neurotic architecture quite proficiently: they sound pretty influenced by 75-76 VDGG plus elements of stoner and space-rock. With the second piece, the album begins to reach its peculiar highlights - 'Prevail' brings a specific kind of sophistication that the opener had only left alluded to. Starting with a psychedelic whirlwind, pretty soon the ensemble indulges in a terrific display of robust sonorities that stand somewhere between the angry and the creepy (Ian McDonald-era KC-meets-Gnidrolog, quite retro!!). At one moment, during the song's development, these grayish atmospheres shift toward a less explicit darkness, turning mysterious, even a bit surreal: this feels particularly true for the magnificent procession accompanied by soft flute flourishes. Once the whole energy returns in the shape of a jazz-rock interlude, comes a cacophonic bridge whose intensity paves the way for the amazing climax, a prog-blues motif washed with epic overtones. The inclusion of a horn solo brings extra colorfulness to the fold, although the main ambiences are definitely provided by the oppressive keyboard layers that dominate the place. 'Trap' is the shortest piece in the album: getting started with a tribal cadence on a 15/8 tempo, the middle section goes ceremoniously slow, and then, the sung section alternates psychedelic beat and languid atmospheres. The album's final 17 ¾ minutes are occupied by 'Labyrinth', the definitive zenith for "Descending". The vibrating mellotron and theremin orchestrations state a familiar progressive basis to the integral instrumentation, while the syncopated development brings a heavily spacey vibe to this great overture. The first sung portion reveals Tom Uglebakken quite close to Bowie and Lou Reed. At the 5 minute mark, the band expands on its psychedelic endeavors, resuscitating the random experimentations of 68-70 Pink Floyd and the cosmic drive of old school krautrock. The sax solo that emerges from minute 9 gradually opens the road toward the most violent instrumental passages in the album. These ones bring an exciting mixture of space-rock, avant-garde jazz and heavy prog: picture a polymorphic marriage of KC, Hawkwind and East of Eden. This intensive orgy of sound has a framework efficiently sustained by Tornes's busy percussive work and Ton's incendiary Hammond efforts (both chords and solos). The sung epilogue brings back the slow motion under a pompous guise, which carries on the previous psychedelic delirium and turns it into a majestic wall of sound. That lovely mellotron is priceless concerning the tremendous climax that ends the song and the "Descending" album in a magnificent manner. This band has grown very muscular, and the last two minutes of 'Labyrinth' state an undisputed example of it - Gargamel might as well have brought one of the finest prog albums for this year 2009.