HAMSTRAPPED

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This album is flooded with remarkable energetic opacity even under their "close-to-the-edge (disbandment)" circumstance. Me. Bungle- ish cynical, a bit nasty, but simultaneously somehow comfortable atmosphere can be felt via their magnificent play, extreme melody line, eccentric rhythm, and crazy funky voices.

The first track "Oompapa", especially, grabs our ears and brain fully with such a meaningless phrase and catchy melodic core. And quite amazing they keep crooked positive phase for every avantgarde freak amongst a bunch of acceptable elements. The following "Layabout" reminds me of some antipop combos who push fake pop immigrants filched somewhere in the pop / rock scene. "Slowly" attaches itself and themselves to us Japanese, filled with sticky "Enka-ish" texture but don't get deceived.

They eccentrically groove and approve upon every track. For example, "Horse" drenched in danceable vibes and beats sounds like a Japanese festival dance Awaodori, enough with their interpretation for happiness or luckiness ... fine for the audience to touch a fantastic moment (half an hour) that was created just before their disbandment (and released posthumously) ... what a pity, but a gem.

Can I write an objective review of an album that for some strange reason I have loved since the first listen? It happened that reading the trakck titles of their "Live in Poland" I was expecting another of that noisy-punky-ish bands, but the first notes of "Oompapa" were enough to catch my attention. Odd tempo and a catchy melody spreading Zappa-esque humour and so many changes touching various genres, sometimes reminding of the GonG of Angel's Egg to come bacj to the initial riff, and all in less than 5 minutes.

So what comes after? A sort of dixieland song with a Broadway flavor suddenly changing into a 60s melodic song, suddenly changing into something else coming from the 80s, but everything extremely well played, because first of all this is a band of skilled instrumentists.

"Slowly"...continues in this parodistic vein. It could be the Platters meeting the Oasis...but before you can realize, you are listening to a slow samba, then back to the main theme. The fake Spanish of the second part is remarkable, just before entering a Crimsonian section which fades into the album's masterpiece.

"Salmon Boots" is incredibly fun, with the bluesy choir and the "Michael Jackson's like" lead vocals speaking of a pair of fish-stinking salmon boots. After some caughs the choir is replaced by instruments for a progressive part suddenly replaced by a swing jazz section. Note what bass and piano do before ending inti the follwing track.

"Horse" is funky, then easy jazz, then 60s psychedelia. Between Zappa and GonG, both for the composition and execution skills and for the crazyness. The guitar solo is nice and I have found myself thinking that a wah-wah on it would have been perfect. But there's more. I don't know how the follwing part can be described, but it return to the easy jazz to later get into a kind of spiritual. They put so much in a single song that if expanded they could have released a triple album.

Finally "5$", which is also what I have paid for the Bandcamp download. A proper 70s rock song reminding of bands like Who or early Led Zeppelin with an excellent rock instrumental part where the guitar has more space than in the other tracks.

In all the tracks the vocals deserve to be mentioned, too.

It's a pity that after this EP Uberband have disbanded. This is my "discovery" of 2016. Few days ago I was playing "Oompapa" in my car, from a smartphone connected to the car audio "aux". My wife took the phone off and threw it to the rear seats. It's a sign that it's good.

4 octopus stars.