MAHOGANY FROG Senna (CD on Moonjune Records)
This CD from 2012 features 43 minutes of outstanding powerhouse rock music.
Mahogany Frog is: Graham Epp (on guitars and keyboards), Jesse Warkentin (on guitars and keyboards), Scott Elenberger (on bass and electronics), and Andy Rudolph (on drums and electronics).
Powerhouse rock with a severe taste for weirdness.
The twin guitars provide a plethora of nasty resonance. Shrill outbursts slide into hyperactive pyrotechnics before plunging into a gritty crunch fest of dazzling brilliance. Often the guitar shines with a sweet glare, like a jewel lost in the fire.
The percussion is complex and dynamic. The rhythms successfully strive to keep pace with the musicÕs frenetic activity.
The electronics are abundant and vicious, go-for-the-throat kind of stuff. Harshly gurgling diodes coexist with slippery keyboard sweeps. Squealing oscillations merge with feedback.
And all the while, the bass establishes a geological rumble undercurrent, provoking the tuneage to greater intensity.
These compositions are savage and insistent. Their relentless surging quality sucks one in like a vortex. Once there, immersed in the glistening miasma, the listener realizes how fertile the music is, how amazing in its intricacy, how lovely in its forceful dedication to evocative sonics.
Even the more sedate tracks exhibit a razor-edged intensity with piercing notes of hypnotic splendor.
FLOORIAN Cosmosaic (CD on Drigh Records)
This CD from 2012 features 53 minutes of powerful music.
Floorian is: Todd Fisher (on guitars), John Godshalk (on bass and vocals), Jim Chittum (on keyboards), Alex Lee Mason (on guitars), and Larry Durica (on drums and percussion).
Guitar and electronics dominate this space rock.
The electronics swirl with psychedelic predilections, the crisp notes slithering across oneÕs cerebellum. A single repeated notes can become a winding road through a realm of delusions. A looped pulsation can glimmer like a distant lighthouse in the fog. Twitchy insects can chitter away as a bridge between more rock-out occasions. Many of the electronic passages are cleverly hidden amid the rest of the instruments, serving as an embellishing adhesive.
The guitars wail away with fevered enthusiasm, seeking virgin ceilings from which they can scrape paint. Feedback becomes a viable application which can be treated into sinuous warbling flows.
The percussion has a tireless drive, delivering crashing beats and progrock rhythms with casual ease. The tempos can be sluggish or frantic, either way the beats sparkle like explosive caps in the dark.
The bassÕs guttural rumble churns deep in the mix.
A few tracks feature dreamy vocals.
These compositions blend psychedelic and space elements with a strong rock sensibility, resulting in powerful tuneage thatÕs attractive and gutsy. The cosmic mania expands into memorable melodic eruptions. Very edgy, very spacey, a very pleasurable reason to grit your teeth.
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