IEM HAVE COME FOR YOUR CHILDREN

If you take the long, spacey jams of early Porcupine Tree and progress that music over the years, then this is a good example of what to expect of I.E.M., especially this album Those of you who are familiar with the long tracks from early PT from the albums "On the Sunday of Life", "Voyage 34", "The Sky Moves Sideways" and "Moonloop" will find this album by Steven Wilson's project I.E.M.as the logical progressing of that type of music, and fans of that sound will be happy to know that SW continued to develop that sound. Fans of Krautrock and Space Rock will also love this album.

Now, everyone pretty much knows that Steven Wilson has a lot of projects going on out there. Some of them require an acquired taste and others are more readily accessible. This one falls between the two extremes. It is not as experimental as Bass Communion nor is it ambient or minimalistic like that and it isn't as accessible as No-Man or Blackfield. It is more experimental than more recent Porcupine Tree and it is a lot more developed than early Porcupine Tree (as I said, it's a natural progression from early PT).

The album is divided up into 6 untitled tracks that are each separate and distinct, but carry the same floating vibe alternating from beauty to harsh dissonance, from melodic flute to heavy distorted guitar and it's all instrumental. The music on the album, at least tracks 1 - 5, is all taken from I.E.M. improvisations done around the time of the recording of their 1st full album "Arcadia Son" and those recordings have been overdubbed and reprocessed and made into some amazing tracks. The first track is 35 minutes long and actually is an improvisation based on the title track for the first album. This is probably the most accessible of the album, even though it is a very long track, it is a very beautiful and flowing piece for the most part but don't get too comfortable because there are a lot of amazing surprises along the way. This I quite an amazing track that you can easily get yourself lost in, but it manages to keep itself fresh through the piece by not relying on repetition too much like some of the early PT tracks did.

Tracks 2 - 4 are more experimental and very innovative. They remain quite interesting and consist more of an even flow of music. Quite beautiful, meditative, yet always throwing in things that keep the music interesting and moving forward. Flowing and soft at times, yet brash and unconventional at others. The fifth track however will come as a shock with some very distorted drums and guitar making for some really exciting sounds and dissonance. If you are playing this over your speakers and not your headphones, you might scare anyone around you when this track starts. The 6th track is not taken from any source material as the other tracks were and is an original piece for dulcimer and mellotron. Lovely and spacey and a nice way to end the album.

As far as SW works go, this is one of the best of his more experimental albums and ranks up there with his best work. It is a definite 5 star album that takes the krautrock and space rock genres to new places and as such is a definite masterpiece of the genre. Search this one out and get it if you are interested in SW's experimental work, because this is some of the best.