SLEEPING IN TRAFFIC - PART ONE

This album is the first Beardfish album I listened to, and it was really an euphoric listening experience. The musical style is very rich and diverse, perhaps like an alternative rock in the hard rock scene (pretty much because of both style of riffs and sound of guitars) , but with the strong influence of classical progressive like Gentle Giant and Frank Zappa.

While all of the tracks are nice and almost has its own unique style (and good theme), some tracks are quite stand out. The fifth track 'Roulette' is a 12-minuite track that probably the best track in this album. It has strong symphonic prog feel and sound (and nice addition of accordion), with good theme and a unique singing style. 'Harmony' is another great track, with a nice mix between 70' hard rock feel in the and symphonic prog in each half of the songs.

'The Ungodly Slob' is an instrumental track that reminds me to the music of Gentle Giant. This composition has a lot of style changes. The second half has a jazzy segment with nice theme with style reminds me to that of Chick Corea (in particular ? 'My Spanish Heart' album).

'Year of the Knife' is also my favourite track. The guitar and bass duet in the intro is very nice. It has strong composition with nice, playful guitar riff and strange but tasty Zappa-style dissonant. 'Same Old Song' is a nice cooling-down closure. It has a bit of jazz feel, with great theme and drum work.

This is a real good album with a lot of creative ideas and great crossover, between progressive and either 70's hard rock or alternative rock (the later is probably stemmed from influence of grunge in Rikard Sjöblom's earlier musical period), but also jazz and groovy feel in some segments. Very enjoyable album with mild complexity but very nice blends of musical style.