IN THE NATURE OF REASON

Ilvcia is a new band from Barcelona, Spain. It was formed in 2010 by Gerard Marrugat (vocals, guitars and samplers), Victor Gil (guitars), Ricard Rius (bass, samplers, effects and backing vocals), Guillem Laborda (keyboards) and Santiago Arderiu (drums and percussion). After 3 years their first album, In The Nature Of Reason (2013) was released.

As soon as the first track 'The Safe' begins you can see that this young Spanish band has some very good ideas. Unfortunately, the recording and producing/mixing quality of the album is way too amateurish and in many moments the band seems completely lost in its own ideas, especially when it comes to the most complex instrumental parts. Each instrument tries to play different parts sometimes, but they are not quite there yet, so it seems as if they were doing mistakes sometimes. The second track is a heavier 'Universe Of Fields', but again Ilvcia shows a great writing skill but the poor recording makes it almost unbearable to my ears.

The next 3 tracks form a suite called 'Baghdad'. The initial sequence is called 'The Gates' and has a great acoustic guitar intro with the 'middle eastern' flavor which the title suggests. We'll have the same acoustics across the suite, later joined by the other instruments. Keyboards seem to be completely out of music's tempo here. Compensating for the first part mistakes we have very nice keyboards in the second part 'The Market'. What's more, this part has an intricate Rush-like riff. The final part of 'Baghdad' is called 'The Suburbs', a slow and haunting keyboards piece that follows a Post Rock sound with hypnotic rhythm. The acoustic guitars have the most interesting role in the song and pretty much throughout the whole album too!

Closing In The Nature Of Reason (2013) we have the only track with proper vocals and it's a piece more 'minimalist' with an interesting bass sound. The CD comes only in a cardboard envelope, but at least the art is nice!

As I mentioned in the beginning, Ilvcia is a good band with many interesting ideas throughout In The Nature Of Reason (2013). The problem is that the amateur recording and mixing (and sometimes also instrumentation) makes it really hard to enjoy the final result. I think though that Ilvcia is a band to pay attention to. If they have the chance to record in a good studio with someone producing it, they'll have a great result! For now I cannot give In The Nature Of Reason (2013) more than 2 stars!

(Originally posted on progshine.net)