SONAR & DAVID TORN: TRANCEPORTATION VOL.2

4.5 stars. My kind of music. I can't get over how the tritone guitars and bass changes their sound. Reminds me of KING GIZZARD and their microtonal drums, bass and guitars that they have used on some albums and how it changes their sound as well, and in both cases for the better. And having the legendary David Torn on here doesn't hurt does it? A match made in heaven is SONAR and David Torn. David plays his usual guitar and adds live looping. By the way SONAR always record live in studio with a lot of improvising. I'm going to quote Stephan Thelan in this review a lot because the best review I've seen is his in the liner notes.

Love the grainy and blurry picture of this band under the actual cd, so cool. Thelan talks about how throughout his life music has been the vehicle to take him places as he wears those headphones. Of course the title "Tranceportation" is fitting. For me music has always been about being the soundscape for where I am going whether walking, running, biking or mostly driving. Since I was a teenager actually. Post-Rock and Electronic are awesome for these treks but this album with it's precise beats, pulses and string sounds works very well for this. It sounds dark because of the tritone and then Torn comes in soloing as he does. Love this!

Thelan mentions "This time, we wanted to bring the raw emotional aspect of David's playing even more forward than on the last album "Vortex", so we consciously chose to keep the compositions as open as possible. This left space for improvisations and spontaneous surges of power, knowing that David's ability to improvise, his otherworldly atmospheres and infectious energy would inspire and ignite all kinds of group interplay".

We get four long tracks adding up to 42 minutes. There is a guest adding as Thelan says "his glitchy and granular electronics" to "Cloud Chamber" the closer. By the way the man's name is Werner Hasler and while he plays electronics in bands he's also a trumpet player and how good would the trumpet sound in this music? I mean distasteful, dissonant and experimental. Come on! So we get three guitarists, a bass player and drummer. I have to mention "Slowburn" my favourite track. Thelan says "It started with a line in 9 Bernard came up with while exploring his echoplex. I asked David to play something similar in mood to what he did on David Sylvian's "The Boy With A Gun", a track I deeply admire." I love that Sylvian song as well.

Anyway I'm a huge fan of this record, love every track.

Switzerland's precision masters are back with yet another impeccably formed and produced album of Math Rock--still in union with American guitar legend David Torn as they have been for the past two albums. Leader and principle composer Stephan Thelen is in the process of stepping away (to pursue a solo career), here showing his expanding skillset with a turn on the tuned percussion instruments on song three, "Slowburn," yet the band sounds as good as ever. Maybe better!

1. "Triskaidekaphilia" (9:43) a fairly thin and surprisingly simple weave over which David Torn shreds and shrieks while the other guitarists pick and pluck their way in their own delicately staccato fashions. It goes by so fast that I find myself a bit underwhelmed by the little and infrequent high points. (16.75/20)

2. "Tranceportation" (12:39) deep bass notes fill the bottom end from the start while syncopated snare and hi-hat hits and pin-dropping guitar notes slowly join in and populate the starry aural field. Interesting how for the first three minutes the bass of Christian Kuntner and drums of Manuel Pasquinelli really get top billing; it's only in the fourth minute that David Torn's note-bending Southern-fried guitar takes the lead. Meanwhile, Christian's bass moves more and more and the other guitars' pin-droppings become more prominent. Unfortunately, I really am not a fan of the style and sound David is projecting with this performance, yet the bass and drums really make this one different and interesting. I love the ninth and tenth minutes when the pin-pricking guitars get more lead time: it's like the sound of stars twinkling in the sky. Finally, in the tenth minute, David's guitar sound and soloing style become interesting and enjoyable to me. And then, for the final two minutes, everybody individually begins to experiment with slow decay into chaotic "death." Quite interesting! (22/25)

3. "Slowburn" (10:01) A nice, full polyrhythmic fabric is established over the first three minutes before David begins his display of pyrotechnics--a quite wonderful one, in fact. Then the music softens for a bit during a return to the opening weave, but all stops are unleashed at the five-minute mark with another foray into the thicker, "B" motif. Great guitar "conversation" in the seventh minute. Drums begin to make themselves known around the eight-minute mark, seemingly goading the others into more aggressive and dynamic expressions--and boy does it work. My favorite section on the album! David Torn really unleashes. But then there is a sudden shutdown at the nine-minute mark and a long, slow decay into silence. Too bad! I wish that aggressive section would have/could have continued. Definitely the most interesting and dynamic composition on the album. (18.25/20)

4. "Cloud Chamber" (9:37) steady bass, rim hits, and sparse polyrhythmic guitar picks open this one before spacey electronics and more guitar lines enter and begin to further shape and re-shape this one. The regular stop and re-start every six, seven, or eight measures (it seems to vary) is a bit too formulaic for me--or rather, a bit too reminiscent of rudimentary bluesy rock'n'roll for my tastes. The intersting stuff in the sonic field is really only subtle and nuanced until about the sixth minute when David's soaring wails and screeches become more prominent and insistent. Again we are treated to a long, slow, spacey decay into silence. (17.5/20)

Total Time 42:00

David is "on" again with some truly remarkable solo displays of shredding, I just wish his lead contributions filled a greater percentage of the songs' lengths. To my ears, bassist Christian Kuntner comes out as the surprise star of this show.

B+/4.5 stars; a wonderful addition to any prog lover's music collection.