W.W.W.

W.W.W. is the third studio album from Danish progressive jazz/ rock band Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe. I´m a big fan of the debut album called M144 from the band while the selftitled second album went too far into jazz territory for my taste. It´s still a good album though. With W.W.W. Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe returns to the more psychadelic leanings of the debut while still maintaining their jazzy edge.

The change in style compared to the predecessor is very obvious when listening to the first couple of songs on W.W.W. Karsten Vogel plays the organ instead of his characteristic sax on both the opener Second Floor, Croydon, the second song W.W.W. and the third song Avez-Vous Kaskelainen while Kim Menzer plays the flute rather than his usual sax. This change in intrumentation really gives those songs a different sound to the normally very sax dominated Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe we´re used to. The sax does return later on the album but never in the jazzy way it´s used on the predecessor. There are vocals on Second Floor, Croydon, All About All and Oblong Serenade while the rest of the songs are instrumental. My favorites here are Second Floor, Croydon and Oblong Serenade with it´s characteristic trombone theme. The only song I don´t enjoy much is the psychadelic organ dominated title track. It´s way too long and really isn´t very interesting.

The musicianship is excellent. On W.W.W. we really get to hear every facette of Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe´s sound from jazz/ Rock to psychadelic rock to more progressive moments like the ending of Second Floor, Croydon. The interplay between these musicians is magical IMO.

The production is really good and pleasant. Very organic just like the sound on the first two albums.

W.W.W. is a really good album and even though it´s not as challenging as it´s predecessor or as groundbreaking as the debut from Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe it´s a pretty unique album from the band. I´ll rate W.W.W. 3 BIG stars.