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Album Reviews
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VEHICLE (2009)
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ProgressoR.net 6! Stars
by Raffaella Berry
Prolusion. Hailing from Oakland, USA, MIRTHKON is a sextet (plus Jarred McAdams, their conceptual collaborator). Though the idea for a band by this name had been in his mind since the late Nineties, multi-instrumentalist Wally Scharold finally managed to put a real outfit together in 2005, after his meeting with guitarist Rob Pumpelly. “Vehicle” is miRthkon’s debut album, released in May 2009; an EP titled “The Joy of Illusion” (which included four tracks all featured on “Vehicle”) had come out in 2006. Scharold and McAdams (who is a composer, writer and video artist) have also been working on an elaborate mythology on which the whole of miRthkon’s output is based.
Analysis. The Bay Area of Northern California, though for over forty years a hotbed of activity for rock music in its many incarnations, has never been noted for its wealth of Avant-prog bands. However, miRthkon and their “Vehicle” seem bent on dispelling any such preconceptions regarding the concentration (or lack thereof) of any given musical tendencies. A big-sounding, in-your-face outfit, adopting the familiar format of RIO/Avant ensembles (a core plus a number of guests and collaborators), they have immediately established themselves as a name to watch with one of the most impressive debut albums of the past two decades (and possibly longer). True, the idea of basing a band’s musical output on a mythology of sorts is not new, with Gong and Magma being the most familiar examples. Indeed, “Vehicle” packs a punch comparable at least to the debut album of Christian Vander’s legendary band. Unlike countless releases by more traditional prog outfits, it offers a sharply different twist on that old, tired warhorse of progressive rock, the concept album – one centered around the titular vintage car shown on the cover and introduced in suitably bombastic, circus-like fashion by opener Congratulations. Though the story line is not exactly clear, the quirky titles and weird artwork, as well as the infectious silliness of the strongly Zappa-influenced vocal parts, point to a clearly satirical component underlying the apparent jollity of the whole. miRthkon’s music could be effectively described as a heady cocktail made with very diverse, apparently incompatible ingredients. The usual RIO/Avant elements of experimentation and textural build-up find themselves side by side with crushing heavy metal riffs, big-band bombast, elegant jazzy passages, pneumatic funky rhythms, and even some jam-band-like improvisation – often within the same track. Unlike other bands belonging to the same genre (including some of their AltrOck label mates), there is nothing understated about miRthkon. In time-honored prog tradition, they can be as head-spinningly excessive as the likes of ELP of The Mars Volta, and I mean that as a compliment. The individual musicians push their instruments to the limit, producing thick, dense amounts of sound that can be somewhat hard to take in at one sitting. On account of the above-mentioned characteristics, describing any of the tracks in detail amounts to a next to impossible task. As already hinted, the Zappa influences are strongest in the vocal tracks like Banana and, especially, Honey Key Jamboree whose extended guitar solo could have easily fit in on an album like “Apostrophe”, but also in instrumentals like Daddylonglegz, a cheerful, funky mid-tempo with a nicely meaty bass line and expressive use of sax and clarinet. All these tracks have a higher than average melodic content, the music flowing along in an eminently listener-friendly way. At the other end of the spectrum we find textbook examples of Avant-Prog such as the darkly atmospheric The Black Fruit and the unbridled chaos of the second half of Camelopardalis, where all the instruments seem to be ‘talking’ at the same time, coming and going as they see fit. On the other hand, the metal component of miRthkon’s sound is especially evident in Flashbulb of Orgasms, a sort of statement of intent strategically placed at the beginning of the album, featuring some absolutely insane drumming and hysterical clarinet, and even more so in the grandiose, bombastic Zhagunk, where the sax bursts and the crunching guitar riffs seem to be conducting a dialogue with each other. Knowing my often critical stance towards excessively long albums, my readers will probably be surprised to see me award the top rating to an almost 70-minute disc. In fact, even if the music showcased on “Vehicle” is not always easily digestible, and some sort of weariness can set in at the end of an intensive listening session, its sheer power and undeniable quality are deserving of the highest recognition. miRthkon’s eclecticism, their creative re-elaboration of so many diverse influences, and – last but not least – the strong undercurrent of humor running through the album clearly indicate a band with an authentically progressive mindset who are serious about their music without appearing to take themselves too seriously.
Conclusion. Throwing everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into the mix, “Vehicle” is not for the faint-hearted, though it will surely turn out to be an enormously satisfying listen for those willing to brave this 70-minute rollercoaster ride of an album. Needless to say, this is highly recommended to lovers of truly progressive rock, especially those who appreciate a sizable helping of humor alongside with the obligatory technical fireworks: Definitely one of the best releases of 2009.
All Music Guide 4/5 stars (AMG Album Pick) by Dave Lynch
Music listeners need to feel good about the choices they make with their hard-earned entertainment dollars, dammit! Thankfully, Oakland, CA-based avant-proggers miRthkon realize this, and so begin their first full-length CD with “Congratulations,” a spoken word exercise that elucidates (over the swells of inspirational-sounding harp and “the miRthkon virtual orchestra”) the wonders of this particular Vehicle, depicted in the cover art as a quite impressive ’30s-vintage classic car. The clearly disturbed narrator promises a fantabulous array of features — up to and including revelation of the secrets of the universe — with increasing passion that builds to a lunatic frenzy as the “orchestral” accompaniment becomes more dissonant, all over the course of about a minute. Now that miRthkon have your full attention, can they deliver on their extravagant promises over the next hour or so? Well, perhaps Ultimate Truth is buried in the music or the extensive and sometimes cryptic CD booklet, but a wild ride is in store at the very least, ranging from the catchy chicken scratch funk-metal of “Daddylonglegz,” one of the most tuneful tracks (and one of four that also appeared in one form or another on miRthkon’s debut EP, The Illusion of Joy), to the concluding “Camelopardalis,” where the band actually finds a rolling groove and sticks with it, underpinning some outré jazz blowing from altoist Jamison Smeltz.
Vehicle arrives on the Italian ArtrOck label, whose Eurocentric, Rock in Opposition-influenced artist roster includes guitarists like Francesco Zago (Yugen), Marco Marzo (Accordo dei Contrari), and Maxim Velvetow (Rational Diet), making an American guitarist named Wally, the leader of miRthkon, seem like a bit of an outlier. But Wally Scharold is a graduate of Oakland’s Mills College, where the music department head is Fred Frith — a former member of Britain’s Henry Cow during the 1970s and arguably the preeminent first-wave RIO guitarist — and it would be hard to imagine Scharold and Frith not crossing paths, or Frith not influencing young Wally. And, in fact, Scharold and company appear to have an RIO sensibility, with the reeds of Smeltz and Carolyn Walter seemingly drawing inspiration from the Italian Picchio dal Pozzo, Belgian Aksak Maboul, and Swiss Débile Menthol, not to mention Henry Cow, of course (”The Black Fruit” is an extended dose of multi-sectioned astringent program music rivaling anything on Western Culture). The rhythm section of bassist Nat Hawkes and drummer Matt Guggemos is tighter than tight, while Scharold and second guitarist/composer Rob Pumpelly’s axes are often pure brain-shattering metal, a particularly crunchy contrast to Walter’s clarinet, suggesting Tony Iommi and Benny Goodman somehow tossed onto the same stage together. Meanwhile, miRthkon alumni and honorary members on drums, reeds, keys, and vocals match the size of the core lineup, while Jarred McAdams is credited as a full-fledged bandmember, with crucial items like “conceptual and narrative design” under his clearly oddball purview.
And then there is the obvious Zappa influence, heard in melodies, vocal arrangements, and reed instrument harmonies — not to mention the guitar solo cutting loose during “Honey Key Jamboree.” MiRthkon seem to love Frank’s attitude as well: the vocals scattered throughout are delivered Zappa (or maybe even Firesign Theatre) style, with spoken voice-overs (from Wally himself) like the opening “Congratulations” and a truly hilarious interlude in “The Black Fruit,” suggesting a soothing corporate spokesperson injected with truth serum, as well as harmony singing in the choruses and refrains of funked-up offerings like “Coven of Coyotes” and the aforementioned “Honey Key Jamboree” — although “Banana”’s vocals coupled with the tune’s occasionally prominent near folkish acoustic guitar riffing might bring Gentle Giant to mind. The occasional Zappa-isms ultimately get caught up in heavier, chunkier currents, however, with so many uninterrupted stops and starts on “Zhagunk” that the pummeling music maintains a sort of crazed flow — perhaps akin to the way someone falling down a flight of stairs would “flow” from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Congratulations everybody!
Sonic Frontiers by Assaf Vestin
The first I’ve heard of miRthkon was through their self-released their EP The Illusion Of Joy in 2006, which was a pleasant surprise. Here we have the band’s first full length, Vehicle, released through the Italian label Alt-r0ck, responsible for other wonderful albums by bands such as Yugen and Rational Diet.
Their brand of avant-rock with jazzy and big-band-like interludes, backed by metal-ish sounding guitars and reed instruments of sorts is a delight to listen to, as they go nuts and move progressively forward in an abstract –like manner. Listen to Flashbulb of Orgasm and its opening charging assault and you’ll get the idea of what’s to expect in the next 69 minutes. Listening to this brought to my mind, Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, Miriodor and Invincible Czars, to give you a rough estimate of what to expect.
The mood is upbeat, cheerful, silly and jolly. They seem to have a great time playing. But that is not to mean this is just a bunch of simplistic songs, not at all. Intricacy and complexity are abundant in their music and composition style. Their mixing of their wacky sense of humour, their lively sounding music and the high level of musicianship and song-writing is remarkable in my opinion.
Humour is prevalent in their music and lyrics. Just go over the lovely booklet with its drawings and weird funny text and read the song titles. The artwork and overall layout are superb and fun to go over as you listen to the album.
The album is quite dense, though rich sounding. But one must be prepared for over an hour-long ride in the miRthkon Vehicle (more like a rollercoaster, in fact). It is in fact an exhausting listen, though a fun one. The sax-lead tracks such as Autmoaton and Zhagunk, are heavy due to the guitars backing up with their crunchy riffs and powerful bass and drums playing. Which is why this can be tiresome at some point. It’s the playful nature of tracks like Kharms Way that brings in a deserved relief, though it too is infused with the high level dynamics of the heavy sounding guitars. But the clarinets present a surprising “opposition” to the heavy nature of the music and add a frivolous element to the overall sound, a cheeky yet seriously determined attitude. Daddylonglegz is another example of this lighthearted approach, lead by the reed instruments, with an excellent rhythm section performance (which is true for the rest of the album as well, but here it really shines). The heaviness level here is a little lower, though still very much present and making a strong appearance throughout the track.
Some tracks present a quirky ending, that is mostly unrelated to what happened before and those serve as intermediates between songs, instead of these being separate short tracks the people usually refer to as fillers.
The vocals for some reason remind me of Phish’s style in songs where they narrate rather than sing. In the tracks with vocals such as Flashbulb of Orgasm and Coven Of Coyotes, it enhances the open and smooth atmosphere of the music and contraficts the heavy guitar sound.
The mingling of heavy and light elements and instruments here is done efficiently and culminates in an appealing overall sound.
In the end, you feel like you’ve just mounted off a high-speed and intense rollercoaster and need some time to relax, catch your breath and maybe take a calmer ride now.
One will need several well focused listens to this album to be able to absorb it all and make out all the various tracks which can at times assimilate into one messy insane piece.
I would have added some interludes or arranged the tracks differently as to avoid the dense feeling one can get when listening, for example to the three consecutive tracks like Johnny Yen, Bappsciliophuaega and Trishna. It can get too much at that point. Each track is fun to listen to and is in itself a great piece of music, but together they can succumb an army of barbarians with their sheer intensity levels.
They could have put Honey Key Jamoboree in between them for example, with its groovy and lighter atmosphere and sound and cool guitar solo and even pop-sounding section.
Black Fruit also presents a deviation from the theme that lies in the heart of this album with its lesser intensity and somewhat abstract interlude and noisy guitars. Overall, this shows the variety of miRthkon’s output.
It might actually be a good idea to listen to this in parts; divide the album in two and focus on each individually and you’ll be able to learn to “operate” this Vehicle quickly.
If you enjoy bands and musicians such as Mr. Bungle, Miriodor, Samla Mammas Manna, Invincible Czars, Calle Debauche, Frank Zappa et al. you should give this a listen.
Wayside Music by Steve Feigenbaum
This is going to be one of the CDs of 2009 for me personally. This is the first full length by a great California sextet consisting of dual guitars, dual woodwinds, bass and drums with a small amount of vocals and some guests. It mixes comtemporary stylings (i.e. the guitars are often crunchy) with stop on a dime avant-progressive influences such as Picchio dal Pozzo, Miriodor, Blast, Henry Cow, Frank Zappa, etc. There’s really not much more to say other than if Picchio and Miriodor really float your boat and you want to hear complex, modern rock music that touches on the influences I have mentioned but that already have their own sound. In addition to this, the booklet is really nicely designed and fairly bizarre and involved. Highly, highly recommended.
PsycheMusic.org 4.5/5 stars
The “story” itself, which unfolds over almost 70 minutes is still a bit unclear to me as to what it’s all about, perhaps it’s just a dramatised stage-related occasion, musically the band succeeds to keep the attention focused the whole way through thanks to certain formulas of change. A big part of it is the expression of a well composed contemporary jazzrock nature with saxes/clarinet arrangements with lots of rhythmical changes of electric bass/drums and some guitars, including a few more distorted metal-like guitar riffs which add extra bass energy tensions here and there. Almost each track starts and ends with a more filmic expression with surreal mixed sounds including cats, dogs, flies and human cries, or other bewildering sounds, as well as an announcing old gramophone voice of spoken word as if being inside a circus act (the first track even has an orchestral part as if introducing some Walt Disney classic adventure movie), and some piano. Before you get a chance of saturation, there are also some songs which have vocal arrangements, reminding me a bit of the Yes area and its specific way of singing, with more fluent rock rhythms, and an occasional rocking electric guitar solo, while in general also this part is a bit more complex than that, while being influenced by the jazzrock core. It is this combination of contemporary elements, jazzrock with touches of heavier bass guitar mostly, with filmic strangeness in between, that gives the impression of a close to Rock In Opposition sensitive theatre experience in different parts. Another great release from this extraordinary label. The music was a close cooperation with composer/writer/video artist Jarred McAdams. On live occasions there is an elaborate video projection program to accompany live performances.
Memory Select: Avant-Jazz Radio by Forrest Bryant
A New Prog Vehicle
It’s prog rock. But there’s so much more here that you won’t find in typical prog circles: a rollicking sense of humor, a heavy dose of real jazz (garbled, knotted free jazz, NOT the occasional major-7th chord that rock reviewers call “jazz”), and amusing spoken-word segments like futuristic (yet old-world) radio announcements. The album opens with one of the latter, congratulating you for the ownership of “a miRthkon vehicle.”
Even in the slower songs, changes come at a fast, fluid rate; you glimpse musical moments just in time to realize the band’s moved on, like a subway car streaming past. The fast songs are impossibly packed with ideas, from hard-edged guitars in complex lead parts to jazzy squiggles from the sax and bass clarinet, as on “Flashbulb of Orgasm.”
The guitar work is exquisite, but the horns really flesh out the band for me, either by adding unison lines to color the sound, or in the solos and extra flutter/fill-ins they provide. The easygoing but quick-footed “Bappsciliophuaega” presents a little of both, while a stretch near the end of “Johnny Yen” uses the horns for a cool end-of-song babble.
I love the way they’ve recorded the album (it’s mixed by Dan Rathbun of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum). Interludes like the strange insect buzzing at the end of “Trishna” or the alley-cat mewling after “Zhagunk” make for nice palate cleansers as well as interesting headphone trips. It’s like the whole album is telling you a story — something I miss in this shuffle-play MP3 world.
The two songs with lyrics are particularly fun. “Banana” is goofy, but “Honey Key Jamboree” takes the cake: It’s jumping, jazzy, and full of silly backing vocals.
“Camelopardalis” is the longest track, at nine minutes, full of free-jazz babble and impossibly thick, rapid-fire bass lines. Wait — a prog album without any songs longer than 10 minutes? Sure, and it’s no concession to pop. Vehicle is so densely packed, even three minutes feels like a novel’s worth of material.
I’d mentioned miRthkon briefly back in May, and the band briefly included Aram Shelton, who’s gone on to work his own projects. The band will be playing the Starry Plough again on Oct. 30.
Sea of Tranquility.org by Richard Barnes
This is the second album this week that I’ve reviewed using a capital letter in the middle of their name – perHaps it’s a new trEnd? The packaging alone with its tongue in cheek ’science’ stories immediately calls to mind Sleepytime Gorilla Museum so it was no surprise to find out that Dan Rathburn mixed the album. Once in the CD player the connections are stronger still although it perhaps lacks some of the subtlety that the aforementioned people portray. Opening with a bombastic ‘advert’ for the Vehicle, we get a parody of marketing with the claims for its benefits growing ever more ridiculous. This leads us into the first short track, a frenzied mix of squealing horns, heavy bass thumps and an RIO styled rhythm and chord progressions. “Banana” is acoustically led with a kind of Mexican motif but the overall feel is of something from England’s Garden Shed, a connection repeated later in “Honey Key Jamboree”.
Vocal contributions are intermittent. This is an album whose strengths lie in the incredibly challenging arrangements and the powerful blend of avant-garde jazz, RIO mechanics, and quirky little melodies, a la Cartoon with the odd blast of thrash metal thrown in to remind you they aren’t a bunch of classical cowboys on a day trip.
The variations within the compositions are so many that trying to describe each track would make this article more like a book than a review. The music throughout is intense, sometimes dark and heavy, sometimes playful but always adventurous. Sax, clarinet and woodwind are prominent features throughout taking the lead more frequently than the carefully controlled guitars of Rob Pumpelly (whose baby this is) and Wally Scharold. There are many highlights including the biting and edgy interplay between sax and back line in Kharms Way and Zhagunk which also features a remarkable piece of work with human and cat vocalisations (you really have to hear it).
“Daddylonglegs” is an intricate work featuring some superb counterpoint between clarinet, sax and bass and outstanding guitar work. Some of the wilder moments appear in “Coven of Coyotes” and “Trishna”. I’m not going to type the title of track 10 again – they must have nicked that off Mars Volta but its worth a mention for the sheer movement around the scales like a pack of hamsters on a wheel. The last two tracks see the band expand their ideas further still with the most Sleepytime like “Black Fruit”, which includes more spoof marketing, and the wonderfully named 9 minute tail ender “Camelopardalis”.
Like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, this band is not for the faint-hearted but its well worth the investment of your time to try to get into it. For a band with only a debut e.p. behind them its also a very sophisticated and ambitious first outing.
International Press (translations coming soon)
Germany:
Babyblaue Prog-Reviews
Ragazzi
Italy:
Ondarock by Marco Sgrignoli
France:
Progressia.net by Christophe Manhès
Zappa in France
Holland:
Progwereld by Peter Van Haerenborgh
