AKRANANIA

The boldly peculiar band Akinetón Retard manage to surpass their splendid debut album with a more splendid follow-up: "Akranania". This album builds on the avant-rock trend initiated by its predecessor, but it takes it to a rougher and denser level; at times, the new material gets to more ambitious places in terms of progressive art. Besides, the addition of a collaborator on percussion helps to solidify the rhythm section with a wider fruition. As usual, it is the dual saxophones that take center stage most of the time, even when they are not soloing: occasionally, the lead guitar assumes the leading role enthusiastically, in this way, enhancing the rocking power inherent to the band's sound. The increased roughness I mentioned a few lines above appears boldly and unabashedly in the opener 'Morricoleman': this one comprises an explosive combination of experimental jazz rock and music for a Western movie's dramatic scene. The solid interaction between the dual saxes and the rhythm section is powerfully enriched by the energetic guitar interventions that constantly create a space of their own in the middle. The same thing works in the following number, 'Recurrencias', which is longer, and therefore, allows the saxophonists and the guitarist to take advantage of their shared more expanded room. With such a shocking title as 'Fana Papal y el Monseñor Smegma Nazzi' can only fear for your soul's condemnation just by reading it, let alone listening to what it may say (Nazi ideology matched with the Vatican? - oh, my God!, this kind of insinuations could make Henry Cow's left-handed diatribes look like retellings of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'). But it doesn't say anything, fortunately for our mental health: it is a brief 'big band'-era Zappa-like interlude between the previous neurotic number and the next one, even more neurotic: that is 'Survector', an incendiary marriage of aggressive hard rock and avant-garde jazz that eventually leads to the triumph of the latter. Just when you cherish the notion that the music could not get more bizarre than on tracks 2 & 4, you will have to face the coming of two new surprises in store. The first one is the RIO-based 'Nimboestrato', which kind of recycles the usual obscure ambiences of Univers Zero through a Latin-jazz filter: the presence of a brief sinister choral arrangement helps the track to get really creepy. After the more conventionally jazzy 'Soula' (a moment of serene beauty that allows bassist Lectra Celcrec show off his contrabass playing skills and the listener to find some relaxation amidst this exhibition of musical paranoia), here comes the second disturbing surprise, which is also the most oppressive. Designed to lead the listener to a most terrifying experience in the context of art, the 12-minute closure track 'Dementia Absorbant' is a voyage of absorbing dementia in which AR pays an exciting homage to Magma and offers a new challenge to the listener, a cruel yet captivating challenge. After 4 minutes of Coltrane-meets-Zappa jazz stuff, a gathering of madmen creates a tortured 7-minute chorale that expands itself through time and space, filling the Universe with insanity and turning it into a Dadaistic puppet show. Sometimes, when I listen to it, I feel tempted to think that the musicians became victims of the musical trap they had designed and wanted to urge whoever was listening to take part of their delirium. Oh, how proud would Christian Vander had been to come up with this idea. but no, this is Akinetón Retard. The track's final section reprises one of the initial motifs, closing the door on the preceding chant. IMHO, this is Akinetón Retard's best recording so far - "Akranania" is a masterpiece of current avant-garde rock, and as such it deserves the maximum ProgArchives rating.