FABLES OF THE SLEEPLESS EMPIRE

As with their preceding album, uneXpect once again succumb to the inclination to be avant for avant's sake without showing much thought as to how to best draw out the gems and sideline the dross of their experiments. I'm not against avant material by any stretch of the imagination - I wouldn't champion Mr Bungle to the extent that I do if I were - but in the case of uneXpect I don't think the band have learned to master a skill which Mr Bungle - and Frank Zappa, and Henry Cow in their better moments, and more or less all the greats of avant-garde rock music - show a mastery of, and that's knowing when less is more.

uneXpect delight in an overbusy style of production in which soloing is layered on top of soloing which is layered on top of vocals until you have an enormous tower of musicians all jamming away, and whilst that's technically impressive it isn't compositionally interesting because the production is so dense that it's impossible to pick out and focus on any aspect of what is happening: vocals, guitars, drums, keys, everything end up conspiring to smother each other. Too often they fail to give a particular aspect of the compositions room to breathe. It's like an oil painting which has had too many different layers of paint applied to it so that the end result is an ugly brown smudge.