GREAT SAGE, EQUAL OF HAVEN

Last Guapo album before they would dramatically change their soundscape to a Zeuhlish-post rock, GSEoH is pretty much in the line of its three predecessor, often veering in dissonant and hardcore experimental math rock. I won't try to decipher what the trio is up to in terms of esoteric concept - provided there is one, but the artwork album name and track names seem to imply at least a little something ? since the band keeps instrumental and it all seems shallow dressing-up of the difficult music. When I say trio, lead blower Caroline Kraabel only plays on half the tracks, and it's mostly the Smith-Thompson duo that fill up the sonic wall;;; But when Caroline does blow in her saxes, it's anything but meaningless. As the album goes on, the trio invited a couple of guests for the last tracks (as if they needed help to beef-up their sound), as the least we can say is that the album is filled with long crescendos, sometimes ala Crimson.

The album starts with a brooding oppressive crescendo soon developing in a weird hardcore klezmer rock (ala Alamaailman Vasarat, but without horns) Total noisy chaos is reached with the thankfully-short Ten Years Of Heisei, where the trachy hardcore math rock nears epic proportions, but this is not positive. Elsewhere (in Sakura) the album offers a little aural rest with a repetitive sludgy riff. Also starting quieter is the Perfect blue piecen, where Kraabel gets reinforcements in the sax dept, with Edwards coming in. And the final track gets the help of Andy Thompson's Minimoog, and it adds the electronic weirdness to the oppressive crescendo.

Well in the line of its predecessor, it would be a while before Guapo would release another album, most likely because they had to find O' Sullivan that would change the band's sound drastically since his instruments werekeyboards, which are almost totally absent on the present TGSEoH. This one is hardly essential, unless you care for Guap's Mk I era.

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