psychedelic / experimental / jazz
And now for something completely different. Today, we've had death metal, ambient, neo classical and metalcore, and now we're diving right into the world of genre-restrictions-ignoring music, guided by American band Crown Larks and their latest effort 'Population'.
The album contains ten songs, and none of them is a normal, easy-digestible pop song. Instead, Crown Larks throw vintage psychedelic rock, free jazz and noise rock into the blender and pour some strange, complex tunes into your ears. The end result is something perplexing, something Zappa would love.
Bands that come to mind include Zappa but also Unsane, Can, Faust, Boredoms, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Melvins, Zu, Ween, Black Dice and Primus. I would also add some free jazz bands but I don't know that many jazz combos. Then again, that is already an impressive list of bands and perhaps a confusing one too. But rest assured, everything about this album is confusing. Here are some questions that have come up.
-Are the people on the cover having sex or are they strangling each other?
-Are those electronics or analog instruments?
-How the fuck am I going to describe this to our readers?
Fact remains, even though I don't really know how to categorize this album, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. This is definitely one of the most confusing albums I've ever heard but it's also a damn good one. There is a certain playfulness throughout the entire album, which somehow provides the band with their own sound, even with the massive whirlpool of genres and influences they have mixed together.
So if you love anything between krautrock, psychedelic rock, drone folk and jazz, you should really check out this album. It's a bit like an instrument store coming to life and creating all kinds of mesmerizing tunes at night. As far as I'm concerned, this is a highly interesting piece of work with plenty of highlights and plenty of surprises. These songs are going right into my day-to-day playlist and I suggest you do the same.
Serge
The album contains ten songs, and none of them is a normal, easy-digestible pop song. Instead, Crown Larks throw vintage psychedelic rock, free jazz and noise rock into the blender and pour some strange, complex tunes into your ears. The end result is something perplexing, something Zappa would love.
Bands that come to mind include Zappa but also Unsane, Can, Faust, Boredoms, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Melvins, Zu, Ween, Black Dice and Primus. I would also add some free jazz bands but I don't know that many jazz combos. Then again, that is already an impressive list of bands and perhaps a confusing one too. But rest assured, everything about this album is confusing. Here are some questions that have come up.
-Are the people on the cover having sex or are they strangling each other?
-Are those electronics or analog instruments?
-How the fuck am I going to describe this to our readers?
Fact remains, even though I don't really know how to categorize this album, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. This is definitely one of the most confusing albums I've ever heard but it's also a damn good one. There is a certain playfulness throughout the entire album, which somehow provides the band with their own sound, even with the massive whirlpool of genres and influences they have mixed together.
So if you love anything between krautrock, psychedelic rock, drone folk and jazz, you should really check out this album. It's a bit like an instrument store coming to life and creating all kinds of mesmerizing tunes at night. As far as I'm concerned, this is a highly interesting piece of work with plenty of highlights and plenty of surprises. These songs are going right into my day-to-day playlist and I suggest you do the same.
Serge
