PALACE OF MIRRORS

Estradasphere has already released a few albums, but Palace of Mirrors is probably their finest effort yet. It manages to mix in a myriad of styles in that seem to flow together nicely. The effect is that the album sounds nice and smooth. I must also comment that "The Terrible Beautypower of Meow", while not only a great song, has one of the best names for a song ever. But I digress, Estradasphere manages to traverse these numerous genres, ranging from metal, to jazz, to , and even to ones that they had to make up, "Bulgarian Surf", "Romanian Gypsy-Metal", and "Spaghetti Eastern" (this was taken from their website).

If you haven't heard them before, the best way to describe them is they sound a lot, a lot like Secret Chiefs 3. This is probably because some of them play with Secret Chiefs 3, so that's understandable. They also sound a bit like Mr. Bungle, mainy Disco Volante, but Secret Chiefs 3 draws a better parallel because the music that sticks out the most on the album are the surf-rock, metal, jazz, and arabic (all of which are mainstays of the Chiefs). The supposed juxtaposition of these genres give the album an unearthly quality. But not too distant, I guess a parallel world quality would be more apropos. Eerie, beautiful, and melodic, why do I only give this 4 stars? Well the album doesn't have vocals, which is both a positive and a negative. The vocals might shatter the mood that the music provides, but the album just doesn't seem complete without them. The music also is lacking in several places, and the album could've been tightened up by shortening it.

Before I go, there is one thing of Estradasphere's that I was pleasantly surprised by (though it doesn't pertain to this specific album, it is an underlooked piece in Estradasphere's body of work). They did a very jazzy cover of the Super Mario Bros. 2 Theme on ocremix.org, a website dedicated to remixes of video game music. Their piece is called "SuperBuckJazz" and I recommend it, along with Palace of Mirrors.