SAAT

From an early age we are encouraged to look for the positives, take the bad with the good, and accept imperfections, be they in relationships, studies, careers, and, yes, music. How often have we grown to tolerate, then appreciate, and even more, love an entire piece even when initially only parts of it were pleasurable? Or a band even though some of their output was unappealing? I admit to not being a free love individual as far as music goes, but I still have learned to revel in earlier parts of a song just knowing that the piece de resistance is moments away. And even when a passage is without merit, I can usually deal with it either by sitting patiently, listening arms folded sternly, or whistling innocently while my hand goes behind my back and I hit the skip or next button!

Alas I fear I have met my Waterloo in this otherwise pleasant, even at times ingenious, prog folk meets Krautrock album by German-Canadian duo EMTIDI. Not once, but twice we are subject to emanations that might make one long for a simple claw on chalkboard interlude, or an equally musical growl from....insert your favourite death metal vocalist. The first appears at the end of "Touch the Sun", and sounds like a pitch bend gone rogue, and the second just beyond the halfway mark of the album closer, like a dental drill that hasn't been tuned up...ever. Both seem interminable and I honestly have to lower the volume to minus one to get any relief. What's worse, they oppress the entire epics of which they are a part, effectively squelching some imaginative song structures, vocals, and keyboards.

For the rest, the shorter pieces offer deceptively simple trippy pleasures, from the clever "Walking in the Park" with its surprisingly rollicking instrumental coda on lead guitar and bass, to the sweet ethereal synth solo that is "Traume", to the drone of biological and creative imperative that is the title cut. The arrangements are such that this talented duo could easily pass for a 5 piece, and drums need not even apply.

Thus it is sad that, in a fit of pique, I must dock not a half but a full star for transgressions as noted, with no regrets, proving that sometimes that (former) partner's habit with the toothpaste, that job where you have to sit through boring meetings with horrible coffee while standing up every morning, or that song with the synthesizer being inexpertly lassoed at 5:18 really cannot be redeemed, whatever mom might have told you.