Harte The Race Fir The Atom

A few disarming moments on “Octahedron” unfold slowly, with pockets of space and calm. Don’t be lured into trusting them. This album, the fifth studio release by the Mars Volta, employs stillness as a setup for all manner of disruption: sharply pealing riffs, phantasmagorical metaphors, convoluted song structures. In many ways it’s a typical effort from the guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and the vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala, who make up the Mars Volta’s cunning and ever-agitated core. But that’s not to discredit the more measured side of “Octahedron,” a harbor for some of this psychedelic prog-rock band’s most alluring melodies and among its most coherent recordings…

The Far Side is from Rome, Italy and had one album released in 2002: 'Parallelebiped'. Before in the 80's and 90's the guitarist, vocalist and keyboardist Simone Montrucchio and drummer David Guidoni had played together in Invisible Sun alongside with bassist Emanuele Fasanelli. They changed their name to Crystal Gaze when the lead guitarist Lorenzo Fasanelli joined the band. They played around Rome some covers with their own original material when they stopped in 1995. In 1998, they reunite as a trio and with the name The Far Side. The music is influenced by Rush, Enchant and Fates Warning and contains some slower and symphonic songs with piano and synthesizers and some heavier and faster tempo kind of songs were guitars are dominant.

Is there a better trio than the Florestan playing today? All three members are consummate artists, outstanding instrumentalists, and ensemble players to the manner born, but it’s the playing of pianist Susan Tomes that carries these performances to their greatest heights. Since the ensemble is perfectly judged by all concerned, it may seem unjust to single out the playing of one member for special comment, but such is the extreme sophistication, the extraordinary subtlety and the expressive range of this artist that I can see no alternative. The tonal control, the exquisite shaping of phrases, the rhythmical suppleness and structural backbone are of an order seldom encountered in the playing even of many famous soloists. But what renders her playing here still more remarkable is the exemplary precision with which it’s matched to the different sonorities and qualities of attack, so-called, of the string players. And what players they are. For all of the above this is not a pianist-dominated performance, except insofar as Schubert wrote the piece that way.