READY TO GO

"Ready to Go" is The Black Noodle Project's fourth studio album. After having travelled in some cold and heavy lands with their great third album "Eleonore", the French prog band is now coming back with an eclectic, moving and magnificent progressive rock album. All the songs of this 65 minutes long album are painted with beautiful melodies and deep emotions, and the band has never been so touching and exciting. The Pink Floyd early influences are still there : slow and melancolic melodies, light voice... but these influences are completely digested, as the band has developed a strong identity and a sound which is recognizable from the first chord to the last. Moving from mid tempo beautiful songs to heavy walls of emotions, The Black Noodle Project has recorded an album that has got everything needed to become a prog rock classical one.

One exquisite noodle meal, indeed.

France´s odd-named The Black Noodle Project with its 2010 album "Ready to Go" has made me listen in amazement and wonder how much versatility a space rock band can really deliver.

In fact, what amazes me the most about their 4th studio release is that The Black Noodle Project has managed to keep their record on the same melancholic sound musically, yet alternately using so many techinques and instruments - the grand piano vs ripping synthesizer sounds, cymbal-heavy drumming vs bongo drums, subtle and almost rediculously easy to play soft-rock style (Coming Up for Air) vs time signature altering prog metal influences (The World We Live In). And yet nothing on this album seems out of place...

I´ve got a feeling that this has something to do with Elad Berliner, the 6th man in the band whose sole responisibility is to manage the band´s sound. And he doesn´t disappoint.

The sound

The Noodles´ "Ready to go" offers a mix of true classics remade in contemporary "French cuisine". You may easily discover the combined influences from Riverside, Gordian Knot, Guy Manning, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, U2 and even some Coldplay here and there.

Although instrumentally nothing backbreaking to play, the smooth and unnoticeable progression of songs leaves little room for improvement. The Noodles´ sound is at times as ethereal as their album cover and at times as precise as a needle (or should I say "noodle"?). Already at the early stages of the record it becomes obvious that, musically, the band has a lot to say. Their excursus into different genres and the way it all combines is almost at all times convincing, whether it be classical etude-like grand piano intro in "I´ll Be Gone" or Oceansize-style guitar riffs in "We´ve Let You Go" and "Ready to Go, Pt 2".

Their vocalist is a bit harder to classify, though. For me, Black Noodle Project´s lead singer and guitarist Jeremie Grima seems to be yet another example of those european vocalists, to whom vocal melody matters more than easily understandable pronunciation of lyrics. In that sense he reminds me of Mariusz Duda, Bono and David Bowie put together with a slight touch of Roger Waters from "The Wall" era.

Likes

-The whole songs of "Ready to Go" (pt-s 1 and 2) and "I´ll be Gone" for their entirety and great composition.

-Powerful drum entry in "Rishikesh / Liverpool / Rishikesh" 3:45 minute mark.

-One of a kind grand piano solos in "I´ll Be Gone" and "Coming Up For Air".

-Anthony Leteve´s outstandingly creative bass-line.

Dislikes

-For obvious reasons I can´t stand the lame drumming, guitar riffs and cheap pop-synth sound in "Coming Up For Air". Vocal melody isn´t helping either.

-Mainly bass-led "Asymmetrical Vision" is just too much Gordian Knot for my taste and lacks overall purpose.

-The guitarists seem to have forgotten the fact, that there are more interesting sound settings on the amp than the default overdrive, which sounds just like beginner teenage garage band.

The verdict

"Ready to Go" is by far not as polished and influencial as PT´s "The Incident" or even not as powerful or eccentric as Motorpsycho´s "Heavy Metal Fruit", but it is musically more interesting to listen to. I would advise to always give this record a spin in its entirety and never shuffle, because otherwise the versatility just doesn´t quite play out.

Solid 3,5 stars.

Porcupine Tree pastiche

Ready To Go is my first experience concerning the French psychedelic outfit Black Noodle Project. Impressed by the consistent solid ratings this album has gained, considerable higher than most of their other albums, I decided to pick up The Black Noodle Project's latest, which is the very on subject of this review.

After some months of listening experiences, I can surely tell that I am not very impressed. The whole albums sounds as if it is a below the average Porcupine Tree album. It mixes both the band early and latter phases, putting PT's mellow early phase and its heavier latter phase together in one same album, but in different songs, and that, of course, comes with a price. With such similarities, Ready to Go not only suffers from the very same problems as Steven Wilson's main project, such as being way too close to Pink Floyd for their own good and having some uninteresting bitpop tunes, but also has added to it the lack of originality and generic spacy music.

Expect to find here most of the clichés from this species of psychedelic rock in one album: exotic percutions, popish songs, predictable etherial guitar riffing, Floydian tunes between Dark Side and Animals, saxophone solo (also inspired Pink Floyd), electronic beats, etc.

However, in spite of those downsides, the album is still enjoyable at times. The best parts of Ready To Go are, to no surprise, the ones with the biggest similarities with either Pink Floyd or Porcupine Tree. The first three songs (Ready To Go, Part 1; We've Let You Know; The One), Coming Up For Air, I'll Be Gone and the epic Ready To Go, Part 2 are the best this album has to offer (with Ready To Go, Part 2 being the best song the record and the Floyd-like) wile, at the other end of the spectrum, songs such as The World We Live In, From Out Of Nowhere and the closing track Farewell are either forgetable or plain boring.

Grade and Final Thoughts

With many similarities between big bands and without many qualities that make the album stand out, Black Noodle Project's Ready To Go fails to achieve more than the average grade. Through its ups and downs it cannot escape from just being somewhere in the middle and finding a unique style of their own is the only possible way I can imagine that they can have any significant improvement in their music.

3 stars.

In many ways this is one of the most diverse albums that TBNP have come up with yet. There are still the Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree influences but the guys have also turned it up a little more so that the intensity and guitars have that little bit more edginess than usual. There may be some who think that this is going to be an ethereal and delicate album as suggested by the album artwork, and indeed there are some numbers that are in that vein, but this is again an album that brings the term 'rock' crunching back in at the right moment. Jérémie sent me this album to listen to at the same time as the collection of demos, and it is interesting to compare the two and see how the band have changed since those early days. Undoubtedly the biggest change is the in the confidence of all those involved, and this in itself allows the band to spread their wings without going too far.

The band do not try to hide their influences, but they are the starting point and not the end product. They have matured and the result is yet again an extremely solid accessible album that all progheads will enjoy. www.theblacknoodleproject.com