BROSSAKLITT

Emerging from the bustling modern day mecca of the French avant-prog scene comes the ever so eclectic and energetic monstrosity of a band called POIL out of lovely Lyon. The word en français actually means "hair" but despite the innocence of a single syllable word, nothing can prepare the listener to this audio onslaught of avant-prog gone WILD! Imagine if you will a situation similar to the album cover in some far away garden of Eden where the bodies of earthly delights engage in an orgy of smearing shredded fruits all over each other's soft supple skin. POIL has a very similar approach with their sonic delivery as the pummel your senses with a veritable assembly line of musical madness that somehow finds a way to fruitfully engage the senses while bombastically stimulating the flight or fight response. This music is just nuts! And to think that all this noise is put out by only three musicians: Antoine Arnera (keys, vocals), Boris Cassone (bass, guitar, vocals), Guilhem Meier (drums, vocals)

Where to begin? POIL takes it all over the place with a very healthy dose of Mr Bungle type antics as it frantically dances with the most angular and jittery rhythms possible for avant-prog including heavy guitars and spaced out keyboards. The album begins with frantic synthesized sounds and immediately jumps into a heavy zeulish groove that reminds me of the Japanese band Ruins who is also a power trio. After a slight sonic attack it turns into a monotonous spacey groove with hyper Zappaesque keys creating atmospheric embellishments on speed with a little Wakeman wankery involved. The track "Patachou" kinda reminds me of the MC Hammer soundtrack theme from the 90s movie "The Adams Family" with a funky groove only taken into warp drive with Area driven jazz-fusion keyboard workouts and very silly nonsensical words and vocalizations that sound like they're ready to break into hyena laughing mode.

If that wasn't enough tracks like "Mao" are more chaos than musical composition as they sputter around like a loose firecracker only to find a grounding through what sounds like a Balinese gamelin session apparently courtesy of the synthesizer albeit with wild and crazy prog time sigs run amok. "Goddog" is perhaps the biggest surprise as the power trio take a respite from the frantic nature of the music and create a bona fide punk electro dance groove that puts Lady Gaga to shame showing that the band has just as much of a knack for instantly addictive melodic hooks as they do for creating over-the-top complex chaotic compositions. "Dins O Klitt" steers back towards the chaotic with its short slap bass funk and angry guitar rage which cedes into the lengthy near quarter hour track "Pikiwa" which offers an intense spaced out sonicscape that begins with strange electronic sounds flapping around like freshy caught net of seafood on a turbulent vessel but ultimately becomes one upped by extreme prog guitar and bass workouts that create frenetic rhythms accompanied by a strange vocal interchange that must be heard to be believed. The mid-section falls into a deep trance inducing repetitive zone that perhaps lingers on for too long but in honesty is a welcome retreat from the chaos with monk type chants and lulling grooves that belie the true nature of the album but ultimately finds a way back to craziness.

This stuff is right up my alley. I am a huge fan of totally unapologetically creative music that takes you on a roller coaster ride and never gives a clue to exactly where it will wend and wind as the tracks swerve in any given direction. This is an album where the band plays apart in their own little worlds as much as they play together and it all seems like some circumnavigating in strange patterns where the trio play in different time sigs only to find resolution at some arbitrary point down the road where they meet up and play together for a while only to end up in some strange array of musical spasticism once again. I assumed after being blown away upon first listen that this may be a gimmicky type of album that doesn't deliver on repeated listens but after quite a few spins i'm finding it to be as fun on the tenth listen as it was on the first since there are so many different things going on. At times it's border line metal with space ambience competing for domination and at other times it's frantic Yugen type lunacy that places it firmly in the brutal prog category. Whatever you want to call it, i call it prog addict's paradise as the music just takes me to those purple pastures where unicorns serve me cocktails in the sand.