METROPOLIS

Late Art Zoyd are far from their early chamber rock albums, far from ordinary electronic music and would be pretty unique even if compared to some contemporary classical music. This album is a different beast to the previous eperiments like u.B.I.Q.U.e or soundtracks like Nosferatu.

The album is divided into 3 parts, the first and main being the soundtrack to the silent movie Metropolis. As explained in the booklet, the main ideas are artificial intelligence, logic and the lack of it, and similarly to movies the music is presented from different angles. The music isn't an interpretation of the actions or some background music, it is a composed score, and it even has a certain time lag between it and the movie. Therefore, the soundtrack could be for bamby at the same manner, the main idea here is the music. The piece begins with a few fade-ins, some sei-melodic arpeggios, highly rhythmic drums and a bit of keyboards, but you should be warned that it wouldn't always be like that. Other pieces can feature dark ambient-like volume swells and droning wind echoes, more rhythmic tracks, a few dance-beats, idm-like glitches and clicks and in few places even harsh noise. But the main point of the album is the competition between all those pieces in every place. Over the time you begin to recognize patterns, melodies or samples which reoccur in a different setting, together with pieces from a different time-place and that's what making the album both rewarding, and annoying for the listener. The negative side of it is that a 1''48' musical piece is physically difficult to listen to, and the framework isn't very similar to prog-rock or oher avant-prog - if you look at the line up, you may notice the lack of many live instruments, such as strings which were very common to early Art Zoyd. So all you've got is a bit of sax and tubes, very rare keyboards, and lots of programmed and live percussion, sound effects and samples. Overall the listening isn't usual at all, but at the 3rd time or so it may become even more rewarding, or stay only lots of clicks, beats, beeps, noise, two- note base lines and unfortunately nothing more.

Next goes the 24 minute Le Chat de Schrödinger(The Schrodinger Cat), whic in fact is a piece for ballet, based on a book of quantum physics(that's so modern composition.) The piece deals with energy and movement, and despite it being written together with Metropolis and they both have connection between them, this one is closer to regular avant-prog. It has not much similar with Le mariage du Ciel et de L'enfer which was the previous ballet Art Zoyd have written, but it's a much more rhythmic, energetic, harsh and dynamic piece. At one place it seems that they went back into chamber-prog territory, but the sound pallete remains the same as in Metropolis.

The last 18 minutes Appars, composed by Kasper T. Toeplitz for the Ensembles Musiques Novelles as part of the Experiments de vol is closer to the electro-acoustic dark ambient music, which may sound as one synth playing unclear dark notes and a bit of percussion, though it is a bit more structured than it seems. Overall it's easier to listen and a welcome change from the album's more frantic pace.

Overal it's a difficult album, unusual and unique. A difficult listen, 3 hours is quite a lot afterall. It's nothing like symphonic prog, other avant-prog or other Art Zoyd albums, but if you are interested in new and innovative music, it is a very good addition to any collection.