UN FESTÍN SAGITAL

This is an excellent and extremely creative album. Un Festin Sagital take the listener on a very varied journey here, putting together a big number of styles and influences, but still managing to have their own characteristic sound. This sound is shaped by a fascinating contrast between electronic sounds and samples on one hand and unplugged instrumentation such as acoustic guitar and percussion and some direct natural vocals on the other, with electric guitars, keyboards and bass in between, making for a very rich spectrum of sounds. Not all of this goes on at the same time; there are parts that are dominated by sound experimentation, others that are more melodic, lyrical, even vulnerable, again others that go more in a rock direction (the latter a clear minority).

The band is classified as RIO/Avant, and indeed there is much experimentation here and a quite unconventional handling of the different influences. There is some drawn out psychedelic improvisation, but also a number of shorter and more conventional parts to give the listener some structure. Although I'd say that Un Festin Sagital have their own musical personality, it probably helps to give you an idea what is going on to list some influences and connections. Particularly in the first half the clearest influence is Pink Floyd's more psychedelic work with less drumming, instead percussion is mostly used in a more African and ethnic traditional influenced way; still the connection is still there to some of Nick Mason's use of toms. Some of this reminds me of Tangerine Dream, Alpha Centauri and Atem phase. Another psychedelic association are the Legendary Pink Dots, with much rhythm, occasionally quite repetitive but always dynamic, carried by guitar, electronic instruments and percussion rather than drums, as a basis for sound explorations. There is the odd theatralic break reminding me of Mr. Bungle. The electronic and meditative parts often have a darker edge than Pink Floyd music, rather going in the direction of Art Zoyd. The way the vocals are handled, and in some parts also the (non-electronic) instrumentation involve some Magma and Zeuhl influences as well. I don't know about traditional South American songs and singing but I'd suspect that this is an influence too, as is modern avantgarde music, pushing the music occasionally also in a quite different territory from what psychedelic/RIO/Zeuhl listeners are used to. You get the gist, I hope. I haven't listened all these connections to take away from their uniqueness at all, and putting all this together is quite something.

The big question might be, how does all this fit together, and my answer is, mostly very well. Maybe I'd need slightly more consistency for giving five stars, there's the odd change toward the end I could do without (the album starts with a clear focus on psychedelic and sound experimentation and other elements are brought in later, and toward the very end they seem to run out of steam a bit. However, surely say 45 out of 54 minutes are top class and the whole album is very enjoyable and full of surprises. At this point this is the only album of Festin Sagital that I know, I'm happy to explore more. Well done, 4.2 stars.