IRIDULE

I first became aware of this band when they helped out one of my fave Italian band PdP for their A_Live album of the same year, but the least I must say is that you shouldn't expect the same soundscapes, even if there are some passages that are somewhat sonically close. When I first heard this album I was quite impressed and even included it in the top 10 of 2010, as I did with Frogg Café's Bateless Edge. But the least I can sa y is that Irridule has sort of grown irritating after extensive listening, and that almost a year after, I'm now ready to put these albums away for a while. This feeling is reinforced especially after witnessing the band's RIO-fest concert, where their concert failed to impress me much. Indeed, just like on their album, the band tends to complicate their music for the sake of complexity, but it appears somewhat unjustified to these ears.

Indeed, tracks like Decchime, Scuttle (despite a melodic middle section), Ganascia or Serial Killer have been done dozens of time by previous groups (U Totem comes to mind, but they're not the only ones), and Yugen doesn't manage to bring anything new. Maybe I've grown tired of this kind of advanced and sometimes obtuse music, one which doesn't seem to care an iota for the listener. Don't get me wrong, if you've read me in different reviews elsewhere on this site, you'll know I'm generally a fan of this kind of music. So maybe it is related to the fact that this kind of album comes 35 years after Stormy Six, Area or Art Bears, but I don't see in which way Irridule irrigates the fertility of the musical grounds uncovered by their forerunners. Indeed, it's rather hard to make the difference or distinguish where the track begins and end, because the lack of structure. You're always looking at the display of your deck to know where you're standing on the album. Of course the album is balanced with more accessible tracks, like the excellent closing Cloudscape (do I detect a bit of PdP's influence?) or the second section of Overmurmur. Some ten years ago, I might have claimed Irridule as a minor masterpiece (had it been released back then), but nowadays, I find it almost expandable.