WE ILA

Nil's Maurin brothers' side project (or was Nil their side project?) come together with a large ensemble of collaborators to create some of the most difficult to describe music in the entire prog lexicon with this, their second album.

1. "L'origine" (11:40) sounding very much like a NIL song, this one opens up heavily before settling into a calm weave over which Sébastien Penel sings. The folk-ish instruments are interspersed within the heavy, almost metal musical soundscape--which only ramps up with a chorus. So many instruments! And only the cymbals and repetitive bass line to keep everything moving at a regulated pace. Big pause at 4:50 in which Sébastien moves into an operatic tenor for a powerful, theatric declaration. Lead guitar and cello bring us out of the stark stagecraft, helping to initiate a return to progginess--though it's still quite theatric in a kind of 1980s hair band (or NINE STONES CLOSE) kind of way. At 7:45 fast piano arpeggi rise out from the background to usher in a more tense passage of MYSTERY-like music. Switch to cello and jazzy support at 9:30 as Séb continues his Marc Atkinson-like performance. Excellent song--full of proggy unpredictability. (18.5/20) 2. "Délectable ennui" (9:07) again, the bass, guitar, mood, and rhythms of this sons feel quite like those of NIL sauf the at-times-dominating presence of Sébastien Fillion's keyboards and many incidental instruments representing many cultures of the World Music scene. Great guitar solo in the speeded up eighth minute which is then followed by a slowed down section in which droning cello is overwhelmed by kicking and screaming violin. (17.75/20)

3. "Errance" (1:07) like a little operatic interlude with Sébastien Penel singing in a That Joe Payne kind of way over some dissonant electric guitar picking. (4.25/5)

4. "Ea" (21:18) a very dark, plodding song with lots of avant garde and classical leanings. Seebastien Penel's theatric performance is quite dominating and diabolical. The music is quite intricate, spacious, and, again, avant classical in its derivations but turns toward a more funky Zeuhlish jazz-rock in the seventh minute as choral vocals pepper the background over the angular music. In the ninth minute Samuel's ChapmanStick and Michel Lebeau's bass drum mirror each other with a syncopated staccato pattern over which synths and Sébastien (and a little vocalise of Roselyne Berthet) Penel populate. The screaming guitar soloing in the 13th and 14th minutes are quite Fripp-like but then are then followed by some gorgeously pacifying violin play. This beautiful passage is then ended in the 17th minute with a propulsion into some high octane playing which is then culminated with Sébastien's reaching voice and every body playing very loudly. This then slowly decays into a beautiful almost waltz-like spacious strings-dominated section until we are left with a simple weave of bass notes and guitar arpeggi. What a ride! I'll have to listen to this another half dozen times in order to make sense of it all. (36/40)

5. "Errances" (1:04) another interlude of dissonant notes and chords, this time coming from effected electric guitar and synth strings and synth voices. (4.25/5)

6. "Danse de la terre" (10:48) deep bass thrum with synth percussion and synth cello with Aftrican hand instruments rising from beneath. Beautiful violin play within the African mood music gives this a kind of Cirque du Soleil kind of feel--until the two-minute mark when tuned percussion arpeggi pave the way for more NIL-like music with rockin' lead guitar playing over the top. Nice music. Nice soloing with some Steve Hackett-like moments. At the end of the fourth minute we shift into a faster gear while Sébastien Fillion displays his synth soloing skills. But the we are quickly broght back to a slow crawl while slow guitar arpeggi, mulitple vocalise tracks from Roselyne Berthet and rolling bass and swing drums carry us into a forest of faery magic. in the eighth minute we are brought to a complete standstill as an ominous synth chord conjures up the feeling of the presence of some mysterious shadow beast. We turn to run away with a furious display of jazz-rock fusion which somehow turns into Genesis instrumentalism at its finest. Wow! Another incredible journey! (19/20)

7. "Immanence" (11:26) opens with Asiatic stringed instrument and hand shakers before talking drum and sitar take over. All of the aforementioned World instruments congeal with a tabla as fretless bass and flute join in. Tribal chant voices seem to come out of some stringed instrument for a bit before the drums rhythm switches while cello and Tony Levin-like ChapmanStick display take the front. Impressive! In the fifth minute, strings synth and other keyboard sounds enter and take over, making the song turn a corner into an exposition of full on Arabian prog rock. Then, in the sixth minute, a lone Magma-like Fender Rhodes takes over while Sébastien Penel's effected voice sings plaintively over the top. Séb's plea made, we drop into a dreamy keyboard electronica soundscape in which Fender Rhodes and flute gently massage our ears and minds. At the end of the tenth minute we revert into an African-like tribal motif with tribal choral vocals before the fretless and Fender let Séb take us back into his pleading keening world. Hauntingly distorted solo electric guitar is echoed in a cave-like vacuum before drums and band rejoin to take us into the wild finale. Such is the unpredicatbility of life in the "Third World." So powerful! (19.5/20)

Total Time 66:30

Because of my previous exposure to the more atmospheric (and, at times, pretty) follow up to this album--2006's The music of We ila is far heavier, far darker and more avant garde than I was expecting.

A five star exposition of eclectic boundary-pushing heavy avant prog that every professed prog lover should give a listen to.