alternative / post rock / experimental
Opus Contra Naturam is an album by Indonesian experimental/ post rock act Gaung, released on June 14. A little more than fifty six minutes long, the album has nine tracks: Lucinae, Eridanus Supervoid, Hole of Paradiso, Killing with Virtue, Old Masters: A Comedy, Summa Injuria, Opus Contra Naturam, Kanon and Evidence of Extraordinary Bliss. A genuinely excellent, majestic and cohesive instrumental rock album, Opus Contra Naturam is marked primarily by a high level of audacious experimentalism, inconspicuous unpredictable harmonies, flirtatious, but very discreet nuances with noise music, expressively long melodies aspiring to seventies psychedelic rock, and a coherent layer that ties together all of their deeply insurgent and divergent sonorous features, although sometimes they do follow on more ordinary post rock traits, despite a constant presence of heavy elements more reminiscent of traditional rock’n’roll.
I haven’t found Opus Contra Naturam to be a great or solemn work, although this album is undoubtedly full of qualities. Impeccable on each and every technical aspect that you can think of, to say the least, these musicians have a precise outlook about what they want to achieve. Endlessly and tirelessly exploring all the possibilities unraveled by their infinitely creative ever flowing harmonies, Gaung is a band that dives hard on musical experimentation, foreseeing all the probabilities offered by their peculiar perspectives on sonorous shape and composition.
The negative aspect of Gaung’s music is the fact that some melodies are thoroughly exaggerated, and too extensive to be endured with patience by any listener. Remembering a lot psychedelic rock groups from the seventies – that displayed similar musical traces in their work, and probably influenced the band – Gaung unfortunately seems sometimes to lose itself in a labyrinth of excruciating experimentation, where time never passes, and monotony is the greatest ordeal of the day.
Obviously, the musicians that integrate this band are exceedingly skilled, talented, extraordinary and competent. What they do, no ordinary musicians would be able to execute. Nevertheless, despite their virtuosity and hugely vast creativity, Gaung seems to lose itself in an endless labyrinth of monotony and repetitiveness. In what concerns audacity and experimentation, they certainly deserve the highest score possible. But the final result, unfortunately, proved itself to be a somewhat tedious album that, despite having excellent passages and amazingly well-written guitar lines, do revolve too much in an indistinct sonorous circumference, that seems to be nowhere, most of the time.
Wagner
I haven’t found Opus Contra Naturam to be a great or solemn work, although this album is undoubtedly full of qualities. Impeccable on each and every technical aspect that you can think of, to say the least, these musicians have a precise outlook about what they want to achieve. Endlessly and tirelessly exploring all the possibilities unraveled by their infinitely creative ever flowing harmonies, Gaung is a band that dives hard on musical experimentation, foreseeing all the probabilities offered by their peculiar perspectives on sonorous shape and composition.
The negative aspect of Gaung’s music is the fact that some melodies are thoroughly exaggerated, and too extensive to be endured with patience by any listener. Remembering a lot psychedelic rock groups from the seventies – that displayed similar musical traces in their work, and probably influenced the band – Gaung unfortunately seems sometimes to lose itself in a labyrinth of excruciating experimentation, where time never passes, and monotony is the greatest ordeal of the day.
Obviously, the musicians that integrate this band are exceedingly skilled, talented, extraordinary and competent. What they do, no ordinary musicians would be able to execute. Nevertheless, despite their virtuosity and hugely vast creativity, Gaung seems to lose itself in an endless labyrinth of monotony and repetitiveness. In what concerns audacity and experimentation, they certainly deserve the highest score possible. But the final result, unfortunately, proved itself to be a somewhat tedious album that, despite having excellent passages and amazingly well-written guitar lines, do revolve too much in an indistinct sonorous circumference, that seems to be nowhere, most of the time.
Wagner
