Easily one of the hardest to listen to albums I've been sent in a long time. Mainly because I hate the genre it sits within contemporary progressive which is an awful description anyway.
The band themselves describe what they do as "Weaving detailed sonic tapestries of dense psychedelic atmospheres and emotive melodies in order to propel their message of social consciousness and environmental awareness".
The best thing about the album is the artwork by Dave Twist a cool pic on the front that could come from a Lars Von Trier movie and on the back the band's symbol that is about halfway between the Einsterzende Neubaten and Pink Floyd's Division Bell and looks cool on a t-shirt they were selling at the album launch I went to too try to make this album make more sonic sense to me.
The opener Talos goes on for meandering eons as a fusion of about 15 songs into one it's confused and epic in an attempt to meld Mastodon to Barclay James Harvest and Jethro Tull but with a stunning little keyboard part almost buried as incidental sounds that would be worth isolating from the rest of it, as it is so overblown any content in the lyrics was lost.
Quietus has the singer going all Thom Yorke overblown on us while the Keyboards punch out a steady and cool sound that is swamped by the weird odd guitar parts and often un-rhythmic drumming I think they are trying for the sort of epic weirdness of mixing Anathema to Pink Floyd and acid mothers temple and flailing around trying to use classical bits in the middle of it while singing about being guided to the other side over 9 minutes of long overblown in the extreme widdly prog noodling that finishes with a very cool trumpet squiggle.
Trust me opens like a slow funk shuffle with an elastic bassline and more Thom Yorke alike vocals that descends into a sort of cocktail bar prog jazz fusion for the sort of listener who likes Steely Dan at their most abstruse and mellow played in a bar I just want it to be over this song is just not for me even before it gets even more horrific with a Tony Blair sample make it be over soon.
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Elbow Room in another epic eight and a bit minutes of musical flight that starts with a sort of semi military snare drum and Chris Rea style laid back bluesy guitar and the oddly off semi operatic vocals that sound like they want to be playing dungeons and dragons again then there is a keyboard interlude that sort of reminds me of Tradgard Algarnas mainly because there the only prog band of this type I can think of in my collection but truly this just bores me as no matter how technically good this might be it doesn't do anything for me is he really trying to sing a pop song in the middle of this mess too?
I barely noticed when the last song ended and Mono No Aware began its 9 minute meander through a netherworld of Prog Fusion cliches and it's hard to want to pay attention to it until it starts pummelling itself into a frenzy after about 5 minutes of meandering and then falls away to some pastoral nonsense a couple of minutes later before starting to build again no idea why it should have just ended at the end of the frenzied bit.
Then finally we get to the recent single Cool Down Mama that closes the album and was the undoubted highlight live as it's a concise song that comes in under 3 minutes and has a good sing along feel which on record has lots of extra proggy flourishes that were stripped away live but it shows that if they can keep themselves tightly under control there is something worth hearing going on for me I'd recommend getting the single and forgetting the rest of it.
Find out more at www.themothersearthexperiment.com www.swordfishrecords.co.uk
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