Brute Flute

Excellent addition to any prog-rock music collection
A perfectly well-crafted and eclectic album of art pop music - nowhere near as dull as most critics call it. The ingredients are simple, but thanks to a good sense of melody and arrangement the whole thing becomes really tasty after all.

Ping Machine - Encore - Live Au Petit Faucheux (2013) {Neuklang Records NCD4072}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 438 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 169 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 43 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2013 Neuklang Records | NCD4072
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Modern Big Band

Realizing his new album ENCORE live at the Petit Faucheux on 22 & 23 March 2013, Ping Machine is betting live music: raw, passionate and uncompromising. At the head of this great set of 15 musicians, Frédéric Maurin says its risk appetite and unveils new licked compositions on stage, demanding all of twists and nuances. The musicians play on the wire and excel on these bespoke writing scores. Facing the audience, the material appears in this its most savage and more urgent. Pleasure, sharing and emotion is perceived.

More highly melodic progressive rock, this time built around longer songs and extended instrumental passages – among the latter, "Munich," which was alternately titled "Munich 1938: Appeasement Was the Cry; Munich 1970: Mine to Do or Die," was surprisingly accessible at nine minutes and change, built on Peter Jennings' extended organ cadenzas embellished with John Culley's crisp electric guitar flourishes, all wrapped around a pleasing array of melodies that easily carry the song's length. The three extended numbers that comprised the original LP's side two also make for fascinating listening, Angus Cullen's McCartneyesque vocals calling to mind the Moody Blues in their prime, while the band's hard, at times slightly jazzy, instrumental attack evokes echoes of Caravan with, perhaps, a touch of the most energetic of Deep Purple's Jon Lord-spawned classical experiments.

Young Team, Mogwai's first full-length album fulfills the promise of their early singles and EPs, offering a complex, intertwining set of crawling instrumentals, shimmering soundscapes, and shards of noise. Picking up where Ten Rapid left off, Mogwai use the sheer length of an album to their advantage, recording a series of songs that meld together – it's easy to forget where one song begins and the other ends. The record itself takes its time to begin, as the sound of chiming processed guitars and murmured sampled vocals floats to the surface. Throughout the album, the sound of the band keeps shifting, and it's not just through explosions of noise – Mogwai isn't merely jamming, they have a planned vision, subtly texturing their music with small, telling details. When the epic "Mogwai Fears Satan" draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that the band has expanded the horizons of post-rock, creating a record of sonic invention and emotional force that sounds unlike anything their guitar-based contemporaries have created.