The Blessed Beat 2015
Indecent wonder from an international trio who can raise and rouse the dead and get away with it.
Every chord is sacred, unless it holds a tritone, but this band base their melodic flow on bliss of a peculiar kind. There’s often beauty in the eye of the beholder and Charles Bukowski’s “The Copulating Mermaid in Venice, California” – that’s what “MIV” stands for – makes a point of it, as do guitarist David Kollar and trumpeter Paolo Raineri. The two were parts of KOMARA, yet since Pat Mastelotto returned to his CRIMSO duties, on board came Simone Cavina whose drumming is looser, just as the story’s interpretation dictates. As far as sonic depiction of a charged madness goes, “Doesn’t Looks Dead To Me” rages wildly to fathom a chthonic, FX-miasma-filled depth, and it’s down there that a beating heart of delight lies, signalled by a lone wind coda.
It stacks into an elegiac harmony for “Like Garbage Left In The Sink” only to let the underlying drone float to the surface which is spiked with random percussion, although the bluesy clang of “Best Fuck I Ever Had” shapes a pleasure out of the chaos. The descent starts with a poisonous pumping of “I Feel It In My Blood” where the brass plays a lightning in a tom-tom’s thunder, while the FX-spurned six-string stages a storm. The result is emotionally captivating, and the not-so-short compositions seem to fly by in a moment fleeting into eternity; this stinging suspense carries “Just Like A Mermaid” to the “Sketches Of Spain” realm via a silence-punctured path. Not surprisingly, the finale of “Only A Damn Fools Falls In Love” brings a rise to an echoing, stately solemnity.
Here’s an airborne monument to all things ethereal: a blessed bit of it, indeed.
*****