21 CANAPÉS

Third release by one of Chile's most adventurous bands Akinetón Retard presents as the title assumes 21 little mostly very tasty little bits triggering the appetite for more. Unlike on their previous album dominated by aggressive saxophone and heavy guitar they were taking here a more reluctant at times acoustic approach using a broad range of instruments including violin and cello.

The 21 short pieces, mainly not longer than 1 - 2 minutes are very versatile and mostly in a jazzy vein with saxophone as the main instrument. Though there are quite a few ones being very enjoyable with a moderate degree of oddity and disharmony with "Enfermas enfermas", "La vida rota", "Potenzia", "Señorita depression", "Cocodrilos con Martini" and "Descargas" being the nicest tracks this disk is anything else than an easy listening. Ever present short excursions into Avant-garde territory are providing enough excitement and endeavour in between. Especially with the three ambient electronic experiments "Desiertos de lagos transparentes", "La vida rota karaoke" and "Transparencias de lagos desertos" which are moreover some of the longest tracks I've got problems to get used to and rather disturb my enjoyment I've to say. But anyway there's still enough enjoyable stuff on here like "La farsa gold" for solo violin and "La farsa platinum" for solo cello. The two already mentioned ones "Señorita depression" and "Cocodrilos con Martini" are as well fully acoustic, here dominated by guitar. Only two of the pieces have vocals (female, in Spanish language), "La vida rota" inspired by Latin-American folk and "Mosaicos" sounding a bit more oddly than the former one.

Overall this is an excellent disk with some unique and adventurous music providing a good picture of the versatility and talents of this great band. Possibly it might not be suitable for everyone but I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for something different. Definitely a must-have one for fans of Avant Prog!