SWEEK

Guitars are sober or heavy (very powerful sound on Everybody takes the plane). I'd like to highlight the extraordinary drummer's job, along with the bassist's one. Violin/Cello's job is so excellent that I don't miss the keys.

This album is an excellent first album for Sweek. Their music is still a bit compartmentalized, but very inspired.

"Summer Trip" is just a vocal evocation with some guitar notes. The album really takes off with "Microbacterium Leprae", in a darker atmosphere. "Everybody takes the plane" is an unbelievable song which seems to review all emotions' gamut with a brilliant cello/violin work. "Creutzfeld Jacobs" is colder, but compensated by "Things are Bigger Then They Appear", which contains a heavy crescendo (with guitars on the foreground). Then, "James' Piano" arrives : it's a only-piano track, with a melodious expression going harder and harder, which is developed in "New James", an epic piece that can make someone's flesh creep. Mine, for example.

Length : nearly one hour of music. Ok > 1/1

Compositions quality : Brilliant Very touching. > 10/10

Instruments diversity : the music is a bit too guitar-lead. Excellent violin/cello's work > 3/5

Tracks personal appreciation : 1/ Summer Trip : 2/5 2/ Microbacterium Leprae : 4/5 3/ Everybody takes the plane : 5/5 4/ Creutzfeld Jacobs : 5/5 5/ Things are Bigger Then They Appear : 5/5 6/ James' Piano : 3/5 7/ New James : 5/5 (so 29/35)

Bass contribution : 3/3 > brilliant and heavy.

Drums contribution : 3/3 > powerful and inspired.

Guitar(s) contribution : 2/3 > Good job.

Violin and cello : 3/3 > absolutely masterpiece. I'm still wondering where's my mind.

"Prog" level : 8/10 > some keys could improve this, but that's just my opinion.

TOTAL : 62/73 TOTAL ON TWENTY : 16,986/20

NUMBER OF STARS : 4,2/5

The group seems to investigate means at being different, but with this album, fail to come up with proper solutions. In the album's track list are the two tracks that were featured on the promo single, Micobacterium Leprae and Everybody Takes the Airplane (whether in the same version or not is not clear), However the violin/cello/piano part of the line-up is relatively unusual that Sweek should be able to get out of the all-too-beaten path, yet fall in the traps of using strange monologues that plague the genre: Sweek manages to go even further than GYBE in the weird and bizarre, making their debut not that easy for frequent listenings. And they can't seem to escape the dead-flogged horse idea of the hidden track stick after a few minutes of silence in the last track.

It doesn't seem that I paint that nice a picture of Sweek's debut and surely they haven't invented hot water with Shooting Star, but this was a first draft f the much better follow-up Cinemativc Crash where the group pulls a very improved soundscape, definitely something innovative on the usual formula. But that Sweek's next chapter

The lengthy (15-mins) Thanx For Sundays opener holds some real sonic differences with the usual canons of the genre: it's rather hard to describe, because most of the ingredients in post rock are usually there, but here they sound a tad different, partly due to François' violin and while not being extravagantly different, it sounds rather fresh and very welcome. The following Tequila Texas Club has some Latino-type trumpet, making the Mariachi post rock sub-genre more than a possibility. The 16-mins+ song goes through a series of fairly rapid changes (given the post rock realm) that metamorphoses its structure thouroughly, while again remaining typically post rock. After the short noisy interlude of Tears Of Happiness, the group plunges in the savage IKI, which uses the full dynamic range and finds its own reason of existence

Although you'll hear the usual slow start laced in the cello/violin sounds, you'll also find the same trumpets that graced the Tequila track on A Dead Sleeping Forest, where an electric piano (played by violinist Sauveur) takes post rock in rarely explored territory. A lengthy semi-playground veering nightmarish sound collage starts the closing Trust Me and after roughly 5 minutes the violin takes the group inro an extremely fast romp of a jig for a stunning finale.

Been dreaming of a Post rock band that you can recognize fairly quickly?? It looks like Sweek might just be that group. While their two records fail to show the extreme nature of the band live, their original sound is probably one of their better assets.