J G THIRLWELL & SIMON STEENSLAND: OSCILLOSPIRA

4.5 stars. I have a lot of appreciation for Simon's "Led Circus", "Fat Again" and "A Farewell To Brains" but I also have some minor issues with all of his stuff. Still he plays that dark and heavy style I like and he flirts often with Zeuhl and is without question an Avant artist. Adventerous is the word and being from Sweden he has some known musicians from our music world helping him out. This release from 2020 at 70 minutes is his most consistent album in my opinion, and I mean consistently great. Sure it leans more to the orchestral and classical realm than the Zeuhl/Rock mode I prefer but I have zero complaints here.

This is a collaboration with Australia's JG Thirwell a multi- instrumentalist and fan of Simon's music mentioning "Led Circus" and "Fat Again" he recounts "I admired the dark power in his work and it seemed adjacent to a lot of music that I love and inspires me- groups in the RIO and Zeuhl worlds such as MAGMA, UNIVERS ZERO and PRESENT, as well as 70's era KING CRIMSON and Bartok." This is a true partnership with each composing four tracks but they make it clear in the liner notes that each contributed a considerable amount of composed parts to each others work.

This is a trio and what a trio! Thirwell, Steensland and drummer Morgan Agren and then we get eleven guests adding flavours with wordless vocals, sax, violin, cello, oboe, bass clarinet, trombone and guitars. This is dense and dark without flaws. Each track is a journey itself into a new world that I find quite fascinating. The opener "Catholic Deceit", closer "Redbug" and also "Heresy Flank" are my top three and what an imposing trio of songs that is! Agren on drums is huge here but he does not dominate at all. Such a group effort with their egos put aside to create this almost perfect album when it comes to that dark and classically inspired music they created here. A top five for 2020 without question and I'm bumping this one up to 5 stars.