Sometimes I put on an album and then feel that there is no way that I can actually describe what is going on, let alone do it justice.
This is music that is certainly going to polarise people - you will either love this or hate it, there is no middle ground Carbon 7 are normally thought of as being a jazz based label but while this music has it's roots in that genre there is so many weird Zappa-esque guitar workouts taking place that it really defies description.

Both of these are instrumental albums within which it is impossible to ever get bored, there are just too many changes of directions, too many strange things taking place that it is almost a given that the guys performing are all masters of their instruments.

Grosso Modo is from 2002, while Rude was released earlyer this year with just guitarist Pierre VERVLOESEM and keyboard player Peter Vandenberghe appearing on both

These albums were recorded extremely quickly with a large amount of improvisation and power, which is incredible given the level of intensity that is apparent. they have taken their influences from The BEATLES through The MOTHERS touching on jazz masters and then mixing it with hard rock and a large solid slug of KING CRIMSON and then put the whole thing in a blender. The result is something that is a jazz workout that is modern and strident, daring the listener to turn it off, but if you feel that urge to just wait a minute it will soon all change again.

The first couple of times I played these I did so quitetly, almost as background music, but that doesn't work and to get the most out of these very strange yet appealing albums they do have to be given some venom.
For the musically adventurous.

UK - FEEDBACK - Kev ROWLAND

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Pierre VERVLOESEM - Rude

Holy cow ! ! ! ! Every so often something comes along that just tears the roof of your head off and this is it.
Forget jazz-rock, forget fusion, forget metal - forget everything - this is the sound of explosive electric guiter work gone wild yet kept within a structured form - yes, it's composed.
But it's also the sound of the inferno. Imagine a cross between '73 area, on-fire John McLAUGHLIN AND Kaspar BRÖTZMANN set inside a rhythmic cauldron marked "Magma", then you'll have some idea of just how explosive this CD is.

The guitar work for a start will leave you a blubbering wreck on the floor, and that's before we even start on the massive bass work and the skull-crunching drums, not ot mention a guy who sounds like he's playing an organ with lead-lined gloves and hob-nail boots.
But it's all so magnificently played, arranged and produced that you positively wallow in its intensity, the fiery turnnace of music never sounding so unutterably storm-force.
Running throughout is a sense of melody, sometimes you feel, almost tongue-in-cheek, such as the almost ELP -like organ run that pervades "Titanic Again" before the guitar lead soars in and takes you higher, the band rolling and rocking but so heavy it's a wonder the CD player doesn't self-destruct, and when the track segues into the even cheesier melodies and hi-octane intensity of 'n'roll', you can't help but wonder which twilight zone you've wandered into.
But then the near five minutes of "Experimental Dentition" begins with more brutal guitar work before the lead guitar suddenly appears out of nowhere and this short and soaring solo appears only to be replaced with drumming that sounds like the devil's doing it, bass work that hits you squarely in the stomach and an organ backdrop that sounds like some gothic horror movie.
Then when all THAT suddenly turns into an ambient dub inferno, you truly swear that you've lost any semblance of musical reference that you ever had as the whole panorama changes and twists to jaw-dropping extent.

The heady delights of the thunder and mayhem, dynamics and densities, solos and ensemble explosions that follow are what makes truly great, ground-breaking and totaly incredible albums, and this is no exception.
Defying every pigeon-hole imaginable, this is out on its own and all the better for it.

One of the most fantastic electric guitar instrumental albums you'll hear in 2005, if not THE best, this has got everything and blows the socks off anyone in the trad fields or rock, metal, fusion, krautrock and practically any other category you care to mention.
Monstrous and amazing ! ! !

UK - DEAD EARNEST - Andy GARIBALDI

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Pierre VERVLOESEM - Grosso Modo

VERVLOESEM is a new name, but his label of choice is not, nor is his bassist (Guy Segers) and drummer (ex-THIS HEAT member, Charles HAYWARD).
People seeking out the wildest, most daring sounds around will never go hungry as long as this group is allowed to roam the streets!
Balancing perilously on a tightrope over an abyss from which MASSACRE, RUINS, and PRESENT stare in disbelief (and declare defeat) the typical Grosso Modo workout sees the quartet flailing away in metallurgic tyrany, only to stop for a brief jazzy interruption, before down-shifting into a 1/2-time brontosaurus stomp.
Hayward's drumming greases the transitions from one section to the next, while keyboardist Peter VANDENBERGHE stays largely out of his boss' way, functioning rather as a backup guitarist, with his keyboards so distorded as to be indistinguishable from a guitar.
Like Fripp, VERVLOESEM leads the band from behind his instrument. His high-tension, nerve-wracking penchant for the utmost in ungodly dissonance and distortion borders on the comical at times, as the band lampoons its way through numerous costume changes.
Though the odd bum note is left unedited (no doubt for spontaneity's sake) you can't complain about execution; these seasoned pros pull off the most hairball genre leaps, skirting from composed parts into improvisation, with skilled ease.
After four tracks or so though I have had my fill, I really have. Cool the temper down a bit in the future to allow for some softer playing and this outfit will surely make a bigger impact.

USA - EXPOSE - Michael EZZO

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Pierre VERVLOESEM - Grosso Modo

The music: with a slight tendency to chaos and frenzy in the improvisations, but above all very big and very electric; the influences can be various (fusion, progressive, avant-garde, contemporary... and some strange sounds, noises and dissonances... also with keyboards and guest clarinet... ), but this is enormous instrumental rock music in elastic tension; there are two states in the music: when the state is of stretching all is more dramatic, the music is in tense wait, but when this state is lost it is like if the hiperstretched elastic band would be all of a sudden released and all the instruments would throw themselves onto the others.
Solid rock pulse and unforgetable spectacular appearances of star rhythms, riffs and melodies.

ESPANA - SHE DIVINE - Héctor NOBLE FERNANDEZ

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Pierre VERVLOESEM - Grosso Modo

Recorded in less than 2 days, Grosso Modo captures all of the raw energy and spontaneity of a dynamic foursome. Their ‘go for broke and damn the overdubs’ attitude permeates the 9 tracks on this disc. Blurring the lines between avant rock and fusion, Mr. VERVLOESEM and crew rip through a diatribe of musical mayhem like seasoned veterans.

Beginning with the ominous sounding explorations of “Hairdressers Go Home “ ( one of many whimsically titled tracks), the disc suddenly rips with a fury of pounding drums and distorted guitar.
The tracks seem to follow a similar pattern: let’s establish a line which can vaguely be called melodic before launching an improvised aural assault which will leave the musically feint of heart clutching their chests in excruciating pain.
The foursome sears through tracks like a cauterizing knife leaving nothing but scar tissue in their wake. A resemblance to actual musicality is evident in most tracks, yet the crux of each number seems to be improvisation.
Some begin ominously, to then explode in a cavalcade of cacophony ; while others seem to burst from the seams from the get go , to then unravel in discordant streams of dissonance. Amidst the wreckage, the listener is often left spellbound by the musical prowess being demonstrated on all instruments.
High points? Too many to mention: the furious guitar probing of “Have You Seen Me ?” where it seems as if Mr. VERVLOESEM’s sustained feedbacks are gonna rip a hole in your speakers; and the superb semi-acoustic guitar and keyboard exchanges on “Olympic Trouble” are merely a demonstration of the extremes in sound that this band can achieve.
The 13:58 closer “ Nobody’s Listening Anyway” may be their ultimate showcase . Here all the stoppers are pulled and every dog gets his day. In true jazz style, a basic musical line is introduced then each member is given his turn to demonstrate his chops. The disc ends with the same type of disharmonic meandering that it began with.

Fans of improvised, raw progressive, which takes no prisoners and asks no quarter take note; Pierre VERVLOESEM’s Grosso Modo serves up exactly the type of recipe your musical appetite has been hungering for. A force to be reckoned with. Highly recommended.

USA - SEA OF TRANQUILITY - Yves DUBE

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Pierre VERVLOESEM - Grosso Modo

Prologue.

And right you are! The eponymous Grosso Modo album is the debut by this Belgian outfit lead by guitarist Pierre VERVLOESEM and featuring bassist Guy Segers, who is well-known as almost a permanent member of both of the legendary RIO bands, UNIVERS ZERO and PRESENT.

The Album.

I won't list those seven Belgian bands, with the creation of which I am familiar, as their names should be well known to most of you.
I only want to say that all these bands shine with a distinct originality of the styles they've chosen, and Grosso Modo is one of them.
The music that the band presented on their debut album is by all means unique and innovative, and there are no analogues of it in the world. On the whole, this album was created within the framework of a unified stylistics, a general definition of which should, in my view, sound the next way. This is a very eclectic fusion of a real Art-Rock (which is NOT symphonic yet), unstructured Art-Rock (which is certainly not symphonic), free-improvisational Avant-garde (which is NOT of a jazzy nature yet), and a brooding, mostly slow and dark, Prog-Metal (which is NOT progressive Doom-Metal yet).
The elements of Avant-garde Academic Music and the guitar-driven Space Rock are also present on the album. Of course, such a monstrously polymorphous stylistics just cannot fit any of Progressive's first four genres (Art-Rock, Jazz-Fusion, Prog-Metal, and RIO), so a niche of Fifth Element comes quite in handy for Grosso Modo. Now, they'll keep the company of NeBeLNeST, FRENCH TV, their countrymen FINNEGANS WAKE, and many other great bands.
Also, it seems these guys 'aren't familiar' with even meters at all, as well as the members of most of the bands of RIO and Fifth Element genres. Or, being familiar with the dodecaphony and the atonalities of Avant-garde Academic Music not through hearsay, they've perhaps just forgotten of them. One way or another, they go their own path, and the continuous use of unusual measures is one of the principal constituents of the music of Grosso Modo.
The alternation of heavy and amorphous structures is typical for seven out of the nine compositions of this album. However, Olympic Troubles, Amazing Grease, Have You Seen Me, and Full Metal Carpet (tracks 2, 4, 6, & 8) are, overall, way heavier than Hairdressers Go Home, Anti-Caking Agent, and Nobody's Listening Anyway (1, 3, & 9). The slow and, at the same time, troublous riffs of electric and bass guitars, both of which were recorded through "Distortion", "Overdrive", "Delay", etc processors, are typical for the first three of these seven tracks. Most of the contents of Full Metal Carpet (8) completely conform to its title.
The arrangements that are featured on it are, overall, the heaviest and fastest on the album. Various interplay between the wild solos of clarinets, including a bass clarinet, and heavy riffs of electric and bass guitars are there especially intriguing. (Many fans of complex Death-Metal would be happy if their favorite bands would be able to reach such a high elevation in composition and performance.)
In those compositional parts that represent the more or less known forms of Art-Rock are sometimes present the simultaneous solos of guitar, bass, and organ. It can seem that all of them sound in unison, though, in fact, they were performed in fourth and fifth. Smacked Down by the Lord Again and The Terrible Rage of the Shy (tracks 5 & 7) are the only compositions on the album that are somewhat out of its predominant stylistics. While being still rather unstable, which is typical for the album as a whole, the textures of these pieces are, however, completely free of the heavy elements.
Also, a few episodes of the unstructured Art-Rock are there dedicated to the correlation of the completely stagnated sounds with those that are astir and contain such innovative and unique features as kind of the eddy currents round the stark (or frozen, if you will) solos. While I described the 'state' of both sorts of these solos quite correctly, nevertheless, I think that it's almost impossible to imagine them without hearing them. Finally, The Terrible Rage of the Shy is the only track on the album that brings to the listener a solid dose of hypnotism.

Summary.

"Pierre Vervloesem's Grosso Modo" is a highly complex album. It is necessary to listen to it a few times to comprehend it. In saying that, I intend to appeal to the profound and really open-minded Prog-lovers.
So, dear Prog-, Doom-, etc-Metal fans! Don't be deluded while reading this review where you see so many of the Metal-related words. To be honest, I doubt that you would like this album, despite the fact that you probably know how many of the academic bands (mainly from the RIO camp) moved towards a heavy sound, which, sometimes, is heavier than that of some of the traditional Prog-Metal outfits.
Most likely, you can find that with their music, Grosso Modo try to solve the problem of squaring the circle or jumping through the UNIVERS' ZERO-space, none of which are actually true.
This album is filled with great music, which is just more complicated than the 'average statistical' Progressive.

Ousbekistan - PROGRESSOR - Rock Pages - Vitaly MENSHIKOV

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