Sonic shipmates on the cosmic cruising Battleship Ethel, Carl Didur and Michael McLean’s equally freeform Kosmiche enterprise, Zacht Automaat, is once again unleashed and untethered. An extension, or moiety, of their Ethel moniker, the Zacht has been around for quite a while now, producing some of the most congruous and illuminating improvised music imaginable.
The Canadian duo, with some help from their expletory friends, Louis Percival (Broken Trees) and Colin Fisher (NTW,NTF), embark once again on a polygenesis musical voyage. Their ninth album, Bags Inside Bags – a metaphorical clue to the nature of the music within – is yet another erudite oeuvre of experimental passages, narratives, vignettes and punctilious versets, split into four parts.
Melodious throughout, there’s always a diaphanous search for an evocative or viscerally ruminative moment amongst the often changeable time signatures and rallying bursts of all-out Krautrock crescendos. As is often on this LP, some of the more emotive and spirited soaring ideas are quickly consumed or hurried along to make room for the next cycle, though to be fair, each new section is, for the most part, a concomitant link to the last.
Side one takes-off, literally with an underpass atmospheric flight into the ether as a backward warping tape loop works back and forth; manipulating what sounds like a sword and sandal MGM score in a maelstrom of noisenik effects. Strains of Cluster and Focus permeate through a primordial soup before breaking-out into an Afro-jazz finale: Sun Ra shares the stage with Science Fiction era Ornette Coleman.
The second side is full of beatific palatial soundscapes that rub-up blissfully against discordant notes, flowing under the imbued tutelage of Roedelius and Florian Fricke. Rhythms change at “the-drop-of-a-hat” and move from awkward avant-prog to saxophone grappling Soft Machine psychedelic jazz; adding a tumultuous temperament to the Rudolf Sosna-esque piano soliloquys.
Side three begins with a communal jam between the Nice and Jefferson Airplane: acid rock, outrageous organ noodling’s and ridiculous speeding notation all vying for space. An esoteric Love instrumental leads the cyclonic mix towards a tentative tambourine shaking come-down, but ends on a frenzy of toyshop keyboards and White Noise redolent sound montages.
The concluding side traverses and replicates the suffused ambience of Popol Vuh and Ash Ra Tempel; the quivering space tremolo of a tripping Joe Meek; and the “turned-on” Clockwork Orange Baroque of Wendy Carlos, as the Zacht wander the exotic and “head music” wilderness for ripe inspiration.
Surely no other band, this year at least, can rightly claim to switch so effortlessly, and with such freedom, between genres yet still maintain such melodic highs.
06/06/2012
[Rating:4.5]
