3VƐ 2024
Reclaiming miracles after almost four decades in limbo, Lucerne ensemble impregnate quietness with magic passages.
Silent Transition
While Swiss collective bowed out in 1986 after their sixth platter, apparently cursed by its “8 on 6” pun of a title, failed to align the foursome’s affinity for sonic grandeur with plastic requirements of the aurally alienating era in which the players found themselves stranded, they never forgot the thrill of creative flight. Slow-forward 38 years, and the original quartet reunited to painstakingly construct what may amount to an edifice of their art-rock paradigm, where Old World cultural values have always been quite prominent but finally became prevalent. Going for a long-distance expression now, the veterans allow four out of six pieces that form “Silent Transition” cross the ten-minute mark, and if the epics seem to linger, there are enough little details embroidering such tapestries to keep the listener concentrated on the larger, yet scalable, picture.
There’s no concept this time, though, as the musicians mention in the booklet various literary sources for their inspiration, and there’s no attempt to break any new ground. While dramatic opener “No Comfort Zone” locates them on familiar terra firma, where Peter Furrer’s thunderous drums push back the soundscape frontiers for Roland Ruckstuhl’s graceful synthesizers to fill the expanse before Peter Wolf’s vocals up the futuristic anxiety, throbbing with Urs Hochuli’s bass, it’s the album’s title track that defines the beauty of the ensemble’s approach. Rarely, since Greg Lake‘s “C’est La Vie” gave prog a distinctly Gallic angle, the genre hosted an equally nostalgic, albeit jovial, European perspective, and now “Silent Transition” sees guitar riffs make room for accordion-like passages and the increasingly jazzy swirl of ivories’ for exquisite six-string flights, courtesy of British master of fusion, Alex Hutchings.
In the wake of this ballad, whose shadows color the rest of the record, Ruckstuhl’s bossa nova figures lurking in the piano-driven “Velvet Clouds” are hardly surprising – but a brief, if fierce, flamenco solo from Hutchings is, as acoustic textures offset the composition’s arresting intensity. That’s why “Out From The Sky” offers hymnal rise and spiritual harmonies which elevate its choruses, and “Signal On The Shores” stages a cinematic tragedy of nigh-symphonic scope, with the band going for wordless quasi-orchestral sway without losing the lightness of touch amidst instrumental eloquence. So there’s perfect logic for the sprawling “Winding Paths” to foray into dancefloor brilliance and envelope pop jive in chamber ambience and heavy drive.
It was worth going back for all these pleasures.
****1/2
