BAKULLAMA / EX BAKU LLAMA

One cannot survive just on polished, finely chiseled progressive rock albums all the time, and I know for a fact, that many aficionados actually enjoy the rougher-edged, at times raw options available. Even the under-produced thinner sound can lay bare the purest of talents, shedding layers of overbearing armour that shields the true essence of a melody or a composition. Fripp once was asked the rather stupid question: "What is what is your favorite note or chord?"to which he imperiously retorted "Silence!"Double entendre par excellence! Rick Whitehurst is a composer and keyboardist who lives in my favorite state of the entire union, named after that famed general and first president. On this 2024 release, he teams up with guitarist Kalvin Foster, proposing the more experimental side of the progressive spectrum, and thus challenging the ear and the mind without the slightest hint of prog by numbers. Each track exudes a stylistic uniqueness, keeping the listening process exciting.

Kicking off any recording with a 10-minute long epic, is perhaps commercially risque but it certainly sets the cinematic mood with a wide variety of sonic and vocal effects that infuse a definitely visionary impression of archeological voyage and ultimate discovery. "The Princess of Tisul" is a sonic travelogue in the vast Central Siberian steppes and going back to the dawn of time. A sabre-tooth tiger eyeing a wholly mammoth near the Mongolian border, while in the distance, tribesmen travel to a solemn burial ground. Stark but intense.

The concussive "Butcher Shop" is a tortuous affair with an incendiary cleaver guitar chopping away at a rhythmic carcass, with mechanical drum slices carving the meat from the bone. Its somehow pleasantly messy, never really macabre, and undoubtedly out there. Rick's piano twinkling eases the previous oppressive atmosphere and reverts the arrangement into a more palatable realm, fit for sale and proper consumption.

Sounding like a modern version of a late 60s hippie lament, "The Waves" hints at a beachside Hotel California, smooth and sunbaked, Pacific Coast highway in the distance, a surfboard stuck upright in the sand. Foster's guitar stings and twangs like a Mojito with fresh lime and some coconut slivers to chew on. Cool breeze.

Tropical industrial effects, mixed with operatic effects and moaning orgasms, "The People vs Celia Valdez" is a montage of dueling psychedelia powered by various keyboard ruminations, both soothing and somewhat ominous. The fractured guitar shards induce a whirlwind of odd impressions, unsure if they are pleasant or uncomfortable, certainly not pretty and accessible! Crowd noises and tumultuous applause.

"Dead Man Trolling" is both jazzy and laid back due to the saxophone and the swooning vocal whilst still emitting a sense of untimely gloom with a dejected piano reciting the last rites. More sax on the ripping "There Walks a Man" with Foster 'fripping'out on his fretboard, an adventurous soundscape for a pedestrian (excuse the pun) stroll deep into the urban decay.

The final three tracks are clearly reworkings of a previous era, "Mean Old World/Big Sky Drifter" comes across as way more melodic and symphonic, a favorite number here. The guitar still colouring the arrangements with liquid notes whilst the sonics are keyboard generated, at times quite energetically bombastic and pervasive. The dense phantomized electronics are creepy, the spectral voices in delirious pain, the mood succinctly sombre.

There are days for pastoral reverie (Slow Dance by Ant Phillips is a regular Sunday ritual), other times, one looks for comfort zones within symphonic or its younger cousin Neo, then dive into the more sombre realms of electronic rock. On occasion when the need of being challenged becomes an overpowering urge, a virtual sonic leap into the unknown can be most refreshing, like plunging into an icy lake after a hot sauna. Bakullama will do just fine.

4 Walla-Walla insomniacs

Baku Llama's Eris is an interesting and somewhat unusual addition to the world of prog by the trio from California. I'm not sure it fits most people's definition of prog ? that is, grand sweeping musical gestures and Titanic-sized crescendos, played with musical precision and technical bravado. Baku Llama uses a different approach, taking the listener on a mostly instrumental journey of moods, sound effects, and atmospheres.

Much of the album has an improvised feel, with many of the tracks consisting of a single riff or motif that gets used as a starting point for the trio to weave various textures in & out before returning to the original idea. The improvs never veer too far off the starting point, and all three musicians interact with each other and let the music carry itself. Although they don't have anywhere near improvisational firepower of King Crimson (who does?) or melodic flair of The Doors, in a more rudimentary way they travel similar territory with their occasionally trippy jams and use of texture and space.

The three vocal numbers provide contract to the jam sessions. Drummer/vocalist Ann Bernath has a decent folksinger type voice and does an especially nice job on "This Time". The title track "Eris" features Ann's spoken-word warning to 'beware your desire for the golden apple' while also singing the goddess of discord's siren song, 'Eris' and 'Calling you' like a haunting mantra over a pulsing midtempo dirge in E minor. Given the improvisational nature of the band, the songs don't have strong beginnings or endings, but do display nice lyrical and melodic ideas. More work on the arrangement of the vocal numbers would really help the songs sound a little less unfinished.

Probably the most unusual aspect of the band's sound is the keyboard work. More percussive than melodic, at times resembling Sun Ra's free jazz, a lot of the keyboard playing could be compared to the sound of sheets of rain falling on the keys (another comparison that came to mind was the sound of hailstones landing on a dulcimer). The effect is hypnotic at times but jarring at others, especially on the vocal tracks. I was much more impressed with the guitar work throughout the album. Although there are no typical guitar solos, David Bernath uses a lot of imaginative tones, tastefully mixing clean & distorted textures with acoustic guitars to drive the band's riffs.

I wasn't sure what to make of Eris when I first gave it a spin. The minimalist experimental style isn't really my cup of tea, but I found that it grew on me over the course of a few more listens. It has the feel of a home-recorded or maybe a coffeehouse gig jam session, but is actually very nicely recorded (I'm a stickler for good sounding CDs in the 21st century). Baku Llama are probably not for everyone, but anyone who wants to relive some of the experimental and slightly psychedelic homegrown roots of prog may want to fire up the black lights and lava lamps and give them a listen.

I pretty much agree with The T´s review about this band. I won this album and I had never heard about this trio of american musicians before. Their mix of krautrock, jazz, avant guard and psychodelic rock is very interesting and well played, but needs some polishing. The music is often good and has its merits, but sometimes get a little boring along the way. What annoys me the most if the fact that drummer Ann Bernath has a beautiful and haunting voice that is used so little in the entire CD. Her singing is one of the album´s highlights.

The very repetitive riffing of all tracks makes this record hard to listen. There is little variation and most of the playing is somewhat contrite. I must say I like those cyclical, minimalistic tones once in a while, but some more harmonies, better and more inventive arrangements would be quite welcomed. This is a CD to be heard in parts. There are good ideas and I enjoyed most of them, but I can hardly listten to it all they way through. Eris is more promising than anything. Those guys are talented, no doubt about it. And also got the chops.They just have to develop their songwriting abilities and make some bolder arrangements. ~

I´m looking forward to listen to their future releases. As a starting point, Erin is a good efford. 3 stars.

BAKU LLAMA's debut shows some promise, but they still have a long way to go before becoming an excellent addition, in my opinion.

The music, as described above, has elements of jazz, psicodelic rock, krautrock, and other genres here and there. For the most part, it's instrumental, with just a few tracks featuring vocals. The sounds are very spacey, kind of narcotic, and very dense. The tracks tend to be very mono-thematic and repetitive, with dynamics, improvisation and textures being the only elements that bring about any change within them.

Two things bother me about BAKU LLAMA's music: one, related to the music itself, is the poorly developed themes and the lack of variation in the structures of the tracks. All songs start with a theme, usually on keys or guitar over a pulsing, menacing, distorted bass and softer drums, and this theme remains the only one throughout the entire track, with no secondary themes whatsoever. The only changes are in intensity, in textures (though not that elaborated) and in the soloing that goes over the main rhythmic section. Usually it is the keyboard the instrument that takes the theme through different stages, all of them very similar to each other. The variation work is not that efficient, and we end up with songs that sound like recorded jamming sesions. I'll be honest: I have played music very similar to this one with a band some friends and I used to have, mostly for jamming purposes.

The second thing that bothers me about this release is related, or actually maybe the reason that it happens, to the first one. The musicianship is still slightly choppy in some players here. The vocals are fine, but they don't appear too often. The guitars are ok but are hardly interesting; the bass plays good lines here and there but falls in constant repetition; the drums are appropriate but lack variation; and finally, the keyboards, the instrument that could make or break this album, sounds like it was played by someone still on the early stages of learning. When the music is repetitive and everything depends on the skills of the solist to make a track interesting, repetitive keyboards are not the answer. I've heard people who don't play keyboards play solos exactly like some on this record, with two fingers, ascending and descending a scale. There are only a few moments when the keyboardist sounds like he has complete control over his intrument.

There are some great ideas recorded on this album, but the lack of development hurts them. The start of most tracks is nothing short of mesmerizing, but constant lack of change makes them become repetitive. The band manages to create music that takes us back to the 70's or 60's, reminds us of the THE DOORS of "The End" or "Not to touch the earth", plays discordant chords, builds tension with menacing bass lines, but some thematic development, at least the most minimal one, would've helped the experience become a much more rewarding one.

As it's a debut, I'll give it 3 stars. If this had been recorded by a seasoned band, I'd have given it 2. But I hear a lot of promise in BAKU LLAMA. I hope they can correct what's wrong and really create a fantastic album the next time around, and I'm sure they have it within them.

This band has a lot of ideas, they just have to learn how to make better use of them.

Different kind of prog, and it's great!

Nowadays i could say that the internet is one of the best tools that a band can use in order to let the world know about it's music, being here in ProgArchives has really an advantage since here we can discuss with a lot of prog lovers and connossieurs, even with some band members that are here. So i want to thank Richard Whitehurst from Baku Llama for letting me (us) know about their music which believe me is really interesting, so i suggest you to click in the thread where you can listen to Baku Llama's Eris.

Eris was their first of 2 albums so far and was released in 2007, they are a 3-member american band with trained and of course talented musicians, Ann Bernath on drums, piano in some tracks and vocals, David Bernath on guitars and bass, and Richard Whitehurst on keyboards.

Eris features 13 tracks and a total time of over 1 hour of excellent music. It opens with Discord which is kind of an introduction and lasts just a minute and a half, it is an instrumental passage with soft keyboard sound making a cool atmosphere.

Hamatsa has a dark feeling on it, it starts softer with piano introduction, a constant drumming and little by little it is progressing and becoming a little bit more aggressive due to the guitar sound, then the music goes in a rollercoaster where you will listen to different intensities, where you may think the song will explode, it suddenly calms down, and sounds very cool.

Betrayed starts with a soft acoustic guitar playing and it is the first song that features vocals and that gives the music a different flavour, the song goes basically with the same structure, that acoustic guitar, some keyboard tones here and there and a single but nice drumming.

Punch It starts with a kind of funky acoustic guitar and actually i think it follows the previous song style. But this is a shorter and non-lyric track, you will hear to vocals but as i said without vocals, some claps on the song that make me move my head and enjoy what im listening to. A pretty catchy song i may say.

Eris the title track has again that dark feeling that i found on song 2, a dark atmosphere this time accompanied with some vocals, at 1:30 we will listen to spoken words and during the whole song we will find an excellent progression in the music, i like a lot what they can do with their instruments, i don't mean they play something that sounds like a virtuoso, but they play with the sounds, the different sounds their instruments can do. I really like this song and it's atmosphere.

Six to Midnight starts with a delicate piano playing, some soft drumming and then an aggressive guitar playing, this is another great track, it is instrumental and i believe this track shows the eclecticism of the band, there are moments where the song slows down and the music it's about to dissapear, but then it raises again and becomes more powerful, like an stop and go, at the second half of the song where it becomes more aggressive, it reminds me a bit to a part of Pink Floyd's Echoes mainly due to the guitar and drums.

This Time returns with the nice acoustic guitar playing as well as the vocals, what i found cool in the album is the order of the songs, when you believe the next song will have the same dark atmosphere, they surprise you with a calm and softer one, like this track 7 which is a beautiful melody.

The Rite has again that dark feeling, but then is complemented with some keyboard notes that if you listen to it with nice headphones you will be caught by the music itself, and it will become a visual music song full of passages, there are moments where i think the band simply make an improvisation, they experiment a lot and the result is very cool.

Discord Resolved is the other shorter track, sounds alike to the first one, just a piano sound that will last over a minute.

Dreameater along with the provious song, it is like a flashback to the first two songs of the album, which in my opinion sound very alike, with the same form, which does not mean that is repetitive or boring, on the contrary, i believe it was done on purpose by the band in order to give the album a perfect structure, in this song we will listen again to a constant drumming, some guitars making progress, and the always accurate keyboard playing.

Torrential is a different and experimental track where the band uses a slit drum and recorder, a nano piano and keyboards, so you can imagine it is basically a keyboard oriented song, which sometimes sounds conventional but it is nice anyways.

Side Two, with this song we are almost reaching the end of the album, this is a 9-minute epic and probably one of the best tracks of the album. It is another experimental track where the music can be visual and where the band's members experiments with their instruments and sounds. The song has it's ups and downs, and what i really like in this albums i that sense of thinking that when the song is progressing and going up and up, it suddenly calms down and starts again, after all you dont know what will happen the next 10 seconds, so it is very nice.

Tragic Mask is the last song of this excellent album, and here it reminds me a bit to some King Crimson improv moments, the music is played softly and with a delicate sound, and it is a nice song to end the album, it has some melancholy on it, it is like their form of saying goodbye.

I am happy with this album, the music here is different from the classic or conventional style of prog, and as Richard Whitehurst himself told me, they are very proud of the album, and after listening to it i am sure they must be proud of it. Highly recommendable, a 4 solid star album.

Enjoy it!

Devour My Evil Dream is the first release from California based trio Baku Llama.

The music here seems to be influenced by jazz and krautrock, as well as synth-based new age music; with some psychedelic touches at times.

The music is mostly on the dark side; and at times can be on the simplistic side. The first two and last two tracks on this album really doesn't work for me; but the 5 songs in the middle are highly enjoyable atmospheric and dreamy tunes; all of them with some dark and eerie touches that makes them captivating.

Unlike the following album Eris, this release is an all-instrumental effort, and quite a few of the compositions here can be found in a more developed and elaborate version on that release.

Baku Llama has made an interesting official debut here. With influences from jazz, krautrock and psychedelic rock the end result here is a dark, brooding and dreamy musical output.

It's all about mood explorations here, where themes and moods are explored, and contrasts are used extensively to give the music a nerve, thus keeping up interest from the listener. Light and dark, harmony and disharmony, structured and chaotic, grim and beautiful - all contrasting pairs to be found on this record....and then some.

Not everything here works, but most of the songs are good ones, that really will captivate listeners open to this form of music.