GUAPO

"Jeweled Turtle" (see cover art) is a slow atmospheric piece that is interesting at times. We get guest violin making noise after 4 minutes. Guitar joins in around 6 1/2 minutes. It turns more experimental before 7 1/2 minutes. It's pretty much guitar and electric piano before 9 minutes before the drums and atmosphere return. The violin is back screeching away. A good opener.

"Arthur, Elsie And Frances" is my second favourite song on here after the closer. Drums and Fender Rhodes stand out early. It's more powerful before 2 minutes. It settles back as the Fender Rhodes becomes the focus then it kicks back in after 4 minutes. Nice. I like the angular guitar before 5 1/2 minutes then a calm arrives with picked guitar before kicking back in. Contrasts continue.

"Twister Stems: The Hellotrope" is a song that I just don't like. We get guest male vocals that kind of have this sing- songy style to them at times. I just can't get into it at all. "Twisted Stems: The Selenotrope" is better but not by much. Jarboe from SWANS adds her vocals here in this laid back tune. Some experimental sounds that remind me of chains rattling come and go. This is a repetitive one and a tough go for me.

"The Planks" is an energetic but short track that hits the ground running. "King Lindorm" is one of GUAPO's best tracks ever. It takes 4 minutes to get to the sound that I absolutely adore on here but then I just sit back and enjoy for the remaining 11 1/2 minutes. Fender Rhodes, drums and bass lead the way and I just can't get enough of this sound.

So yeah tough not giving this 4 stars especially considering that the epic "King Lindorm" is on here but that might change in time.

1. "Obscure Knowledge (Part I)" (25:39) Opens with a fairly exciting six-minute section that is straight out of the Zeuhl textbook, but then transitions into a rather-prolonged ten-minute SWANS-like section which is all founded upon the repetetive ejaculation of a single guitar chord. The sudden switch into a kind of 1960s BLACK SABBATH blues-rock. At 17:30 the music leaps into a series of YES-like machine gun explosions which is then followed by a brief Steve Howe-like passage which is then transformed into a Robert Fripp-like riff which becomes the new theme foundations for a five minute section of continuous experimental sound discharges. This is then ended by the band's quick discourse into a Crimson/VDGG-like fabric which then gets the Kavus/Fripp treatment from the lead guitar. Nice section that ends in the 25th minute with a brief return to a variation of the SWANS-like theme. This is quickly cast off in favor of a very thick, heavy King Crimson patch. But, alas, this is too good to last as the band falls back into a prolonged single-chord format for the song's final section in which the bass, organ, Fender Rhodes, and second guitar are (thankfully) more prominent (though Kavus' single chord guitar is still far in the foreground). (42.5/50)

2. "Obscure Knowledge (Part II)" (4:38) is an organ and bagpipe-led piece that again can't help but remind me of a SWANS song. All kinds of incidental "wind"-like sounds are thrown into the cauldron by the various other musicians, making for an interesting cacophony of babeldom. I actually quite like it! (9/10)

3. "Obscure Knowledge (Part III)" (12:39) opens with some real blues playing before settling into a kind of Hendrix Haze. Still, this is real music, with foundation in real chords, keys, and scales. (21/25)

Four stars; an excellent contribution to the modern catalogue of Avant/RIO.

"The Pillman Radiant" is such a great title to the opening track that takes up the bulk of this album at over 26 minutes. The first 5 minutes are experimental and dark with plenty of atmosphere including eerie sounds after a couple of minutes. This all changes as we get a calm before the bass, keys and drums kick in. Guitar after 7 minutes and it's angular. A change after 10 minutes as the tempo picks up with the guitar playing over top. Pulsating organ 15 minutes in as the heaviness continues. Huge bass lines and ripping guitar follows. The intensity rises after 17 minutes before it all starts to wind down 18 1/2 minutes in. It sounds so cool a minute later with sounds coming and going in this experimental section. There's actually a BLACK SABBATH-like vibe("Master Of Reality") after 21 minutes in this urgent sounding section. The band are on fire before 24 minutes then we get what sounds like mellotron as it settles back but this is still powerful. What a song!

"Complex #7" is a haunting and experimental piece that is dark and spacey as well. "Tremors From The Future" opens with pulsating keys as the drums join in and the tempo picks up. It's fuller before 2 1/2 minutes. I'm thinking ANEKDOTEN after 3 1/2 minutes and 5 1/2 minutes with that angular guitar and sound. The tempo picks up 6 minutes in but it settles back some with angular guitar. The pulsating keys are back. How impressive does this sound after 8 minutes. Insane! The organ runs over the throbbing bass and sound. Ripping guitar 9 1/2 minutes in and I really like the mellotron-like sounds a minute later to the end.

This is one of my highlights from 2013 for sure and i'd rate it just behind "Obscure Knowledge" and "Five Suns" when it comes to the GUAPO catalogue.

"Obscure Knowledge Part I" is the almost 26 minute opener and man what a ride this trip is. Sounds pulsate as the atmosphere becomes uncomfortable then it kicks in hard before 2 minutes followed by the guitar lighting it up. The guitar reminds me of Steve Howe here. Powerful organ runs as well then the guitar rips it up again before turning Howe-like. It's winding down slowly around 5 minutes as pulsating keys join in and those powerful sounds that drone in and out. It starts to build and we get this repetitive sound but it does have different shades to it as it plays out. A change before 13 minutes and I love when it turns into an ANGLAGARD-like sound around 15 minutes with the angular guitar, organ and more. This continues until it changes before 22 1/2 minutes. Man that section is priceless! They then seem to jam almost to the end in a very groovy way. Love the Fender Rhodes. Just before it ends we get this bagpipe-like note that goes on and on as it blends into "Obscure Knowledge Part II" and it continues this way throughout this over 4 1/2 minute track as experimental sounds come and go. The most avant-garde piece on here.

"Obscure Knowledge Part III" opens with the bass, guitar and keys coming and going until it picks up with drums joining in. The angular guitar is awesome. It settles back but it will shift in tempo and mood throughout. This track really infatuates me. How intense is this before 9 minutes! And this will continue to the end.

Man this can be so experimental but they give me enough melody to balance it out really well. This is an intriguing album that will appeal to Avant fans especially.

The last two tracks, "Mictlan" and "Topan" stand out as being a little better and more varied, but they're still quite repetitive. It feels like most of the ideas on this album could have been adequately developed in half the play time.

Then I heard this Guapo CD - "History Of The Visitation." My god, what a masterwork. I have a couple other albums of theirs, and they are quite wonderful, leaving hope for future RIO's with a new slant. THIS IS THAT HOPE!

From beginning to end, your ears, soul and heart are turned upside down, smoothed out, and then put under intense pressure, all to be relieved by the sheer beauty of tone and color that works so well together. Obvious reference points are the trad RIO giants - Univerze Zero, Art Zoyd, a bit of Henry Cow, etc....but this is English RIO at its best, and reawakens what makes the best of RIO so insatiable to ears that love the style.

A previous reviewer stated that maybe you have to be an older listener (of which I am!) to really appreciate this, and maybe he's right. But I hope that a younger generation can hear this wonderful work of Guapo, understand that it is derived from learning, listening to past and present, and pure magic and talent.

Bravo Guapo, Bravo!

Last Guapo album before they would dramatically change their soundscape to a Zeuhlish-post rock, GSEoH is pretty much in the line of its three predecessor, often veering in dissonant and hardcore experimental math rock. I won't try to decipher what the trio is up to in terms of esoteric concept - provided there is one, but the artwork album name and track names seem to imply at least a little something ? since the band keeps instrumental and it all seems shallow dressing-up of the difficult music. When I say trio, lead blower Caroline Kraabel only plays on half the tracks, and it's mostly the Smith-Thompson duo that fill up the sonic wall;;; But when Caroline does blow in her saxes, it's anything but meaningless. As the album goes on, the trio invited a couple of guests for the last tracks (as if they needed help to beef-up their sound), as the least we can say is that the album is filled with long crescendos, sometimes ala Crimson.

The album starts with a brooding oppressive crescendo soon developing in a weird hardcore klezmer rock (ala Alamaailman Vasarat, but without horns) Total noisy chaos is reached with the thankfully-short Ten Years Of Heisei, where the trachy hardcore math rock nears epic proportions, but this is not positive. Elsewhere (in Sakura) the album offers a little aural rest with a repetitive sludgy riff. Also starting quieter is the Perfect blue piecen, where Kraabel gets reinforcements in the sax dept, with Edwards coming in. And the final track gets the help of Andy Thompson's Minimoog, and it adds the electronic weirdness to the oppressive crescendo.

Well in the line of its predecessor, it would be a while before Guapo would release another album, most likely because they had to find O' Sullivan that would change the band's sound drastically since his instruments werekeyboards, which are almost totally absent on the present TGSEoH. This one is hardly essential, unless you care for Guap's Mk I era.

The album itself features three tracks, the first of which is a five-movement 26-mns Pilman Radiant. As usual the piece opens with a lengthy and calm intro, gradually picking up momentum and intensity, to lead us into the demented soundscapes and foray deeply in the entrails of the band's musical realm. The short (less than 5-mins) Complex 7 track can be seen as the intro of the 11-mins finale Tremors From The Future piece., which is filled with heroics and histrionics. Great stuff.

As a bonus, the ever-excellent Cuneiform label includes a DVD that features two concert footages from two different festivals (Nearfest 06 and RIO Fest 07) when O'Sullivan was still in the band. If both footage are very interesting, don't expect professional filming (the sound is quite OK, though), as it's mostly one (sometimes two fixed cameras shooting the scene. Nearfest's Five Suns film is in black & white and shows the amazing live dynamics of the band, despite two seated musicians. The French RIO fest (which yours truly attended) footage is shot in colour, but it would be an exaggeration to say that it is in superior quality than its companion footage. However, I had almost forgotten how the King Lindorm piece gad enthralled me back then. Yet another absolutely stunning Cuneiform and Guapo album, one that will give me further enticement to check them out live yet another time (seen them four times already) at this year when they return to this year's RIO fest.

Now as soon as I see the name Cardiacs I sit up and pay attention, and have also enjoyed what I have heard from Knifeworld, but it is fair to say that these guys understanding of music here (the label helpfully provides some references such as controlled chaos, atonal harmony, uplifting darkness, and beautiful destruction) is quite different to many. They seem to mix RIO with prog, and while King Crimson is a fairly obvious reference it is possible to also bring Magma, Univers Zero, elements of Can, The Mars Volta etc. easy listening this isn't.

This instrumental album only contains three songs, and the first of these is twenty six minutes long so it is heads down and see you at the end. There are large similarities with free jazz, although never quite veering into that territory although reedmen Thomas Scott and Dave Newhouse from Maryland avant jazz-rock institution The Muffins are some of the guests taking part. The label describes this as "Sun Ra jamming with Stravinsky", and if that makes you believe that this can be hard work to listen to, yet ultimately rewarding, then you would be right. This will only appeal to a small part of the music buying public, but those who enjoy finding something different need to investigate further. www.cuneiformrecords.com