ΔΙΣΚΟΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ

MASTODON -"CRACK THE SKYE"
by George Georgiou (song292@yahoo.gr)



They have achieved every inch of respect offering each time an important gigantic shadow to the playground of the heavy sound monuments. Racing a long ride of real hard work and intelligent evolution as a band, Mastodon, after the legendary chapter of "Blood Mountain", had to face the challenge of their lives. Being the basic choice for the next real big thing in the world wide metal debates of the last year, Mastodon dare to place their severe personal point of view beside their classic influences of space and groovy hard sounds of the seventies, ending finally to a flowing album. Songs with all of their characteristic structures reveal a friendly filter of impressions, several surfaces of recordings meet into an attractive balancing result: producer Brendan O' Brien found the path to concentrate all the comets of the Mastodon universe and finally transform the gathering into the solar system of "Crack The Skye". A homogenius fireball of technical realism along with a natural flow of riff waves remain distant and friendly at the same time: melodically interesting to swallow your resistence and deep enough to stand against the rust of time. A weird, vivid story in the lyrics, a dizzy storyteller-mushroom of wormholes, a golden navel string, a world of spirits, Siberia and ...Rasputin, turns the final result to a supernatural spiritual trip where trandition and progress meet under the brave honesty of our heroes. Extaordinary tips across their soundscape their longest efforts, "The czar" and "The last baron", reinvent the complete metal history by being themselves at the same time. If there is a certain gate to wider audiences there is no more honest passage than this piece of troubled spirit and pure adrenaline...

NEW RELEASE 2009

MONO:"HYMN TO THE IMMORTAL WIND"
by George Georgiou (song292@yahoo.gr)




Leader Takaakira "Taka" Goto is trying with his limited english to drive the 28-piece chamber orchestra to the direction he has in his troubled heart: "play like a cloud drifting slowly across the sky"... He is so serious that the only way you can take him is... seriously. MONO, the extraordinary japanese post-rockers (if we feel obliged to use the name of a genre to describe the big music...) have sailed with their cinematic ship before 10 years and this is their fifth, new album, three years after brilliant "You Are There". Recorded in Chicago, again with producer Steve Albini and faithfully following analog recordings, they have certainly been more into neoclassical paths of expressions. Their extensive tracks still creep with shimmering guitars and leading to biblical distortions with marching drums push you to a solution of hope but there is also a rich depth of epic, detailed orchestration filling their sources with numerous gifts of sounds. All these patient trips of the soul from personal drama to a violent catharsis come growing in waves of impressions ,building a vision of inner revelation. MONO sound like an ancient music box of honest sentiments kept hidden in the closet for the daily last breath before surrendering to sleep: no hesitations, no strategic balances, no intelligent manouevres between the head and the heart, only a heroic eastern march to the eternal fire of truth. For all those growing listeners in the post rock fields, all the tracks of the album are clearly memorable: in their gently increasing tunes from abyss to enlightenment, they have their special melodies shining to improve that these are not practice of a certain style but births of pure expression. From "Ashes in the snow" to "Everlasting light", this is the burning horizon with the fatal dance of all the sentiments we are afraid to face...

NEW RELEASE 2009

THE VEILS:"SUN GANGS"
by George Georgiou (song292@yahoo.gr)



It's very easy to say "like father, like son"... Especially when your father is Barry Andrews ,a keyboardist collaborated with XTC, David Bowie, Brian Eno and many more, and you are dealing with music signing to Rough Trade Records at the age of 17, the suspicious one would easily say that you have achieved recognition based on the fame of your father. But...luckily you are Finn Andrews, the lead singer and song-writer of the London based band The Veils, you have already released "The Runaway Found" in 2004 and "Nux Vomica" in 2006 and you have spread a serious crowd of evidence that your song writing can't fade away unnoticed. According to Finn, "Sun Gangs" is "a very modern mixture of prayers, love letters and personal record keeping". And Finn has the necessary wealth to build a well crafted small universe of sounds, drawing the lines of breaking up with an attractive mood of acceptance. "Sit down by the fire" hangs between ballad parts and epic crescendos and represents the conception he shares with the producer Graham Sutton (Jarvis Cocker and British Sea Power) to describe his strange voyage of visions, symbols and conclusions. "Sun Gangs" slips in silence to a tender peaceful absolution leading to "The letter", probable The Veils' passport to the massive audience. "Killed by the boom" turns to distorted alt-rock with heavy streams of guitar and percussion. The drinking ballad of "It hits deep" leaves Finn in an abandoned empty soundscape and "Three sisters" bring religious visions with an epic feverish rhythm. There is a weird meeting with the sentimental luxury of absence in "The house she lived in" and poetic nice visions lead to the vain thoughts of the ''Scarecrow". "Larkspur" is the longest track of the album with a biblical depth in its sound and the noises turning to sly, nervous silence. "Begin again" seals gently the album, sounding like the caress of habit turning to a noble surrender...
Finn Andrews has the "Midas touch". Balancing between the seduction of middle listeners ears and a daring personal point of view, he finally imprisons his crowd of stimulations in high class songs of impressive beauty, poetry and strength. If there is still a suspicion of justice in this cruel world of music business, The Veils should be soon the next alt-rock heroes instead of those 15-minutes-long ,first-page bubblegum superstars the press adores to discover...