LIVE AT BAZILLUS

"Live at Bazillus" is my first encounter with Sonar, or let's say my first encounter after quickly sampling some of their material in order to decide what to buy first. This live record has three tracks from their debut "A Flaw of Nature" (note that the opener here is "Tromso" although this is erroneously omitted from the progarchives track list). This was the only album that appeared before this live release, but still some material that would appear only on later studio albums still existed at the time and is performed here. There are two tracks from their second album ("Static Motion" and "Tranceportantion") and one ("String Geometry") from the third one "Black Light". "Gordian Knot" is apparently exclusively here.

The music of Sonar is in my opinion better classified as "Post Rock/Math Rock" than as RIO/Avant. All is instrumental, and all songs are very rhythm oriented, slow to mid tempo, make ample use of odd time signatures, and build up mostly smoothly and slowly. The listener is fairly safe from sudden shocks and contrasts and also from sound experiments; we're up for a pretty plain and solid drums/bass/guitar/guitar landscape. For the right type of person this will be a quite comfortable experience; there is no reason to call this "avantgarde" at all.

I went for the live album because the rendering of the music is quite dynamic and lively here, but still the sound is almost impeccable. It deviates only in ways from the studio sound that I like, it's somewhat more rough, pure and earthly, which serves their music well. Venue and audience seem quite small and in this respect we are only very shyly reminded at times that this is a live recording.

The music is somewhat repetitive and based mainly on rhythmic patterns with variable dynamic, although these change occasionally. All is teamwork, there are hardly any solos; one could even deny the existence of composed melodies. It mixes the appeal of minimal music with a rock approach to the instruments and could as such be seen as archetypical post rock; the time signatures and the obvious attention to precision make it more math rock.

Overall this is very elegant, atmospheric and convincing and I like it a lot. I don't give it 5 stars because one can criticise this as a bit too uniform; of course if you're in the mood for this kind of thing, you may be quite happy about the fact that they go for it from beginning to end without flinching.