DE REPUBLICA

Do you have "brave" ears? Do you like your progressive rock to be challenging? Have you ever wished that the efforts of artists like Zappa, Gentle Giant and Echolyn were just a tad less staid and predictable? Do you often find yourself enjoying "difficult" music that sends your mate, family, and/or pet howling from the room? Does the idea of an Italian prog band who dramatically deliver their vocals in Latin, and play uncompromisingly eclectic, avant-garde music which draws heavily upon jazz fusion elements intrigue you?

If you've answered "yes" to the above, then have I got a band and album for you! Italian sextet Deus Ex Machina, with their wildly original 1995 release DE REPUBLICA, are a bit like the starship Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk: they boldly go where few men (or bands) have gone before -- then annex the territory! Listening to this CD is to undertake a journey to exotic new places, with many exciting side trips and diversions along the way. Sometimes the trip can get a bit intimidating, even scary; but just try to relax, take it all in, and be comforted in the knowledge that you are in the hands of a highly accomplished and capable crew.

(Indeed, the artistry and musicianship displayed on DE REPUBLICA is uniformly superb, but there is one somewhat sour note: a few of the thirteen songs on the album end with jarringly fast fade-outs -- much as they all tend to do when my wife enters the room....)

Mere adjectives and musical antecedents are woefully inadequate to impart a sense of what is contained here, so I'll turn to the visual arts to try to "draw" my parallel: The music of DE REPUBLICA is the aural equivalent of a pastiche of paintings by Bosch, Picasso and Dali, with a hearty dose of Jackson Pollock thrown in for good measure.

Just as the sometimes disquieting, experimental works of those artists are not suited to all tastes, so is Deus Ex Machina's music decidedly not for the "faint of heart." Don't say I didn't warn you! If you're still interested, check out the sample MP3 available here, then seek out this album. You may well come up with many words to describe DE REPUBLICA, but I very much doubt if "boring" or "bland" will be among them!

Caveat emptor! Highly recommended -- but only for the highly adventurous!