Crossfade Grimoire

Album Reviews- Issue 6
Current mood:  animated
Category: Music

DISKOPHRENIA: Issue 6

It’s been a while since I have been able to listen to anything, and I am glad to be back. Thanks to everyone who is still with me: in mind, body, spirit or any partial combination of the three. I had originally planned to also include Jonny Details’ Natural Habitat release as well as Hot2Go’s Australian Kiss EP, but that will have to wait until next issue; apologies to those artists as wel as those who are waiting for that. Alright, time’s a-wasting. Let’s get to it!

Dream Aria- Transcend (2008)                                 4.92

Toronto’s Dream Aria specialize in 21st century art rock, an ecletic blend of classic 70’s art rock oves (Styx, Kansas, Renaissance, etc.) and modern stylistic touches of electronica and classically-injected fusions of rock and jazz. Keyboardist/arranger Donald Stagg and siren vocalist Ann Burstyn form the outit’s lyrical and compositional unit, with Garry Flint’s percussion/production, Jon Casselman’s exceptionally fliud bass and guest guitarists round out the rhythm section.

It’s easy to see how this band’s music has started to infiltrate the independent airwaves; their music is a stylized, polished form of modern art rock, and an inspired extension of their 2006 debut, Into the Wake. After a subtle start (”Compassion”), Dream Aria adaps the classic Delibes aria from the opera Lakme, “Viens, Mallika, les lianes en fleurs…(Flower Duet)”, into a scintillating modern context. Burstyn shows her operatic talents in spades over Stagg’s fantasitc update of the late 19th century French opera classic, a melange of Renaissance (the band) fluidity with a vintage Mike and the Mechanics suppleness that is both graceful and sturdy. The following track (”Labyrinth”) uses a more aggressive Genesis-like underpinning to highlight Ann’s siren belt, a voice that is easily on par with Heart’s Ann Wilson and the aforementioned vocal soul of Renaissance, Annie Haslam. The track also does a great job of stretching out in the Rush/Styx mold, while the arrangement feel like the song was dipped in a vat of Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood.
Other tracks (”Pandora’s Box”, “Serpent Nile”, “Tigress”) reflect their fascination with world instrumentation and more experimental surroundings, and while they are not as powerful as the tracks before them, they lend an air of astral travel, mysticism, and mystery to what would ordinarily be the filler portion of an art-rock album. Of these, “Tigress” is the standout of this journey back into the wake, with solid progressive rock writing reminiscent of Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe’s (the incognito Yes) “Fist of Fire”, great juxtapositions of symphonic and serpentine structures,  Burstyn’s signature snarl, and a wonderfully exotic feel.
Rounding out this excellnt second effort are “The Secret” and the title track, “Transcend”. The former is a song whose stomping grounds exist on some plane where both Enya and Kansas live in concert. Utilizing a beautifully, funky art-prog groove, Ann is everywhere at once: cajoling, snarling, seducing, wailing. The guitar break is similarly inspired and Casselman’s bass playing really shines here like classic Pentangle. The album’s title track serves as a fitting and well-nuanced coda to such a diverse and talented offering: a technologically-informed mini-suie. As with most of the album, the solos are top-form and ripping, and the unexpectedd percussion pitch-shift in the album’s fade-out is just this side of Nine Inch Nails.
A formidable and well-executed second outing from this exciting Canadian powerhouse. Watch this band closely! Log onto their website at http://www.dreamaria.com for more information.

ENT-From the Depths of the Forest (2008) [Bone Structure]
5.69

In just under 30 minutes, this hard-to-find EP on Belgium’s Bone Structure Records, is an amazing document of cutting-edge dark ambient, a unique soundscape that combines Orb-like dronework and atmosphere with more industrial-strength darkness such as Throbbing Gristle, Delerium, and more. I have to confess that I didn’t know much about the form when I found this wonderful EP, and while I am still in the ozone, for the most part, I really enjoy this offering for the promise it has concerning ENT’s mastermind, Demogorgan.
The title track is a 12-minute excursion into a universe of processed and treated sound, neaerly the complete spectra of noise (white to grey), and sonorous, haunting synth textures. The mastery of this song’s production and compositional sense is such that I am rarely able to make it through without entering an almost out-of-body state of consciouness. As the track takes full hold of you, it is by turns ominous, ghostly, transdimenstional, beatific; visions of necromantic metamorphoses, torrential rain in slow-motion over the ruins of Gotham…I could go on, but you get the idea. The song culminates in a tonal and aural modulation that is truly both sacred and profane like a slowly-evolving thunderstorm of sound: the epitome of Olivier Messiaen at a Throbbing Bristle gig. Indescribably, mind-alteringly essential.
Coming after the epic title track are two lesser but not inferior tracks: “Sempervirens” and “Wrath of the Jotun.” The former is diametrically opposed to its predecessor in that it pursues the open barren spaces of minimalism, both in tone and texture. “Semper” is like listening to a song of the lunar landscape: solemn, solitary, beautiful and utterly alien. Use of deep-toned synth drones as a ponderous melody is captivating and it is good counterpoint to the wall-of-dark-sound approach in “Depths.” “Jotun” returns to the sonic fantasias of the first tune, although with an emphasis on thundering bass register atmospherics and drones. The tune also has somewhat of a Jean-Michel Jarre feel to it, circa his 1976 landmark album, Oxygene, as does “Semper.” While the unremitting and constantly growing dark panorama is truly a dark ambient track to reckon with, it is, to be honest, a little hard on the ears and gets old a little too quickly.
This EP is an oustanding, vital document of dark ambient, and in the case of the title track (which I am fucking addicted to), of the entire experimental genre. Look for an upcoming collaboration with Necrite on a similarly hard-to-get limited edition 12-inch later in the year, and his upcoming release, Desolation, on shaking hell records, both in CD form and in limited edition wood-boxed release.

Links: http://www.myspace.com/entfromthenorth