Category: Music
Average customer rating:
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1
UPC: 742630043483
EAN: 0742630043483
ASIN: B00005B6VN
Release Date: 2001-03-21
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Category: Music Average customer rating:
Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 UPC: 742630043483 EAN: 0742630043483 ASIN: B00005B6VN Release Date: 2001-03-21 |
Mister Green
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Album Description
The album: the first one by this french band (ex-Stratus), based in Poitiers. "Mister Green" is a sort of musical bomb, something never heard! Bombastic floating sounds of keyboards and sound effects in a Pink Floyd vein, satured, harsh guitar parts not unlike King Crimson, a mix of numerous inspirations (including circus' music!) and musical eccentricities near some Zappa's work… These nine pieces, mostly instrumental, reveal fantasy, humour, complexity, a lot of dark atmospheres, and can't be compared to anything else. With additional sax, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, Taal builds a powerful music, somewhere between jazz, classical, rock music: a musical revolution!Customer Reviews:
Taal's Tall Tale.......2003-01-09
Based around a vague concept (of Mister Green himself), the music itself is the centerpiece of interest and is marvelously orchestrated, compositionally intriguing and flat-out gripping at times. Comparisons with Pink Floyd and King Crimson have been made. Compositionally, the resemblance is more to Mister Bungle in terms of the sheer number (though not the same degree of perversity) of different types of ideas strung together in individual pieces. Musically I'm more reminded of old Genesis, hopped up on frenzied doses of caffeine, mostly in the harmonies and especially in guitar work that often seems inspired by the more hyper moods of Steve Hackett.
The epic "Barbituricus", at over 15 minutes, starts things off quietly with a bit of ambient hum before a mellow, and surprisingly richly orchestrated opening theme is introduced. Guitar then kicks in to restate the theme, and it has to be said that the many and various guitar textures all over the album are one of its main charms, especially with how thickly overdriven the sound is without becoming lost in muddiness. A multi-track choral section is next, followed by another splendidly orchestrated, heavy guitar riff, things seem about to take off and everything comes to a halt for a darkly atmospheric passage that is shattered by another heavy theme and deliciously fuzzed out guitar. At minute 10 a choral finale reminiscent of Genesis seems to end the song, but is followed by a circus-like vamp, overlaid with searing Hackett-era Genesis guitar ("Return of the Giant Hogweed" for example). A brief flute solo only adds to the impression. But these Genesis-isms do not add up to something like Marillion or IQ. Finally, and unexpectedly, the opening theme returns with a powerful vengeance, totally brought to life by the guitar and roaring to a genuinely fine ending. Quite the song to start with.
"Cornibus", at a mere 8 minutes, starts off in a medieval vein, adds guitar and a second flute to morph into something Arabic, and then just jumps right out of its own skin into a fast, angular guitar-driven jam underpinned by especially spirited drums. A short blast of Fantomas-style chords introduces a very short orchestral, then guitar-orchestral section, followed by a fully contrapuntal Bach-rock bit with flute. This is all in the first half of the song. As with the first song, somehow Taal makes all of the disparate parts hang together in a unity of a song.
A more sustained study of fewer ideas than the opening song, "Flat Spectre", at twelve minutes, strikes a compromise in terms of length between the first two songs, not quite exceeding both in scope and compositional audacity. Swinging between quiet moodiness and melodic grandeur for the first third of the song, the band then opens into what is more or less an extended guitar jam with more Arabic flavorings. At 8 minutes, everything comes to a full halt with faint keyboards, untreated guitar and ambience before slowly building (guitar solo grinding away on top) toward the finale.
"Ragtime", which is more jazzified circus music than a ragtime, packs a lot of music and orchestration into its 2'40" length. It also momentarily has the heaviest riff of the album, before the music zips on to something else. Shorter still is "No Way!", which is a mildly psychotic montage featuring noise, an inessential little vocal-piano vamp, and a guy walking around drinking and vomiting. "Mister Green", the title track and the only track with "normal" vocals and lyrics, feels very much in Mister Bungle territory, and mashes psychocircus and rodeo music, piano lyricism, jazz, Mexican warbling, driving keyboard-bass and full orchestra into 4'34".
After this trilogy of "silly" music, the alternately slow-heavy guitar sensibility that opened the album returns, with a particularly fine 4'33" composition. As with the opening epics, it is the combination of ideas, tones and implausible-but-logical shifts that maintain interest throughout the song.
"Aspartamus", at 7'35", seems like an extension of the last song, or perhaps a reprise of the openers, largely for the similar character of the band orchestration. Mood swings continue to be abrupt, but not annoying. Idea after idea is introduced, without much development or restatement. Suddenly the music sails into a moody keyboard fog before bursting out of it again 2 minutes later with a big, crunchy guitar jam.
"Super Flat Moon" opens with more Eastern influences, driving bass and typical Taal guitar frenzy. The sawing violins and guitar solo that follow are one of the melodic high points of the album, before the song disappears into a hollow, icy and almost eerie section. Improvisational in feel, the atmospherics of this section range from quietly paranoid to schizophrenically howling, and is surprisingly interesting for what to a certain extent seems to be instrumental noodling. The band has the good sense, over and over, to come back to a composed musical idea just long enough to make you think the whole thing is intentional. Yet another piano-bass lounge-jazz vamp with Eastern overtones kicks off the final section of the piece, which features more fuzzed out guitar and someone like the Pict from Pink Floyd's "Several Species Etc" yelling.
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