MOVING GELATINE PLATES

Moving Gelatine Plates is the debut studio album from French act Moving Gelatine Plates. Moving Gelatine Plates is placed in the Canterbury catagory but if you ask me it´s hard to find what should give them a place in that catagory with this album except that they take some of their influences from the jazzy part of Soft Machine´s music.

The music is in jazz/ rock territory. The dominant lead instrument is saxophone and the music is generally more jazz than it is rock. There are a few vocal parts but the music is predominantly instrumental. The most notable vocal part is the last section in the 15:20 minute long Last Song. Last Song by the way also hosts an unbearably long drum solo. I hear both influences from Soft Machine and Frank Zappa but a band like Pazop also comes to mind when Moving Gelatine Plates are at their most loony. Moving Gelatine Plates doesn´t reach the excellence of Pazop IMO though.

The musicianship is excellent. Lots of jamming parts that are really well played.

The production is good even though I don´t enjoy the drum sound much.

This album is highly praised by most reviewers on PA, but for me this sounds very much like most other jazz/ rock albums from the early seventies. Way too much wailing sax ( it´s actually not as wailing as on many other albums), extensive jamming and too little structured song writing. I know this is an aquired taste and I´ll aknowledge that this is good music but personally I don´t enjoy it much. 3 stars is all I can give. If you like more jazz than rock in your jazz/ rock this will be a treat I´m sure.