Reviews:
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Reviews:
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Goldmine
May 11, 2007
Monstrance
Ape House
Grade: 3 starsMonstrance plays by its own set of rules: no bass, no overdubs or editing of any kind, and absolutely no pre-planning. Everything is improvised on the spot on the self-titled debut from XTC's Andy Partridge, former XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews and drummer Martyn Barker (Shriekback), and as intriguing a prospect as that is, it results in maddening inconsistency and extended periods of self-indulgent excess that would send Philip Glass running for the hills.
Separated into two discs of material, the experimental Monstrance is full of shape-shifting, constantly evolving works that dabble in ambient and otherworldly sounds, before descending into utter chaos. Nowhere is that more evident than on “Torturetainment,” an exercise in dissonant, bi-polar guitar that zaps from one corner of the universe to the other before retreating into a cave of hypnotic some would call “boring” drone and then bleeding into the quiet beauty of “The Floating World.”
And then there's “I Lovely Cosmonaut,” the ridiculously abstract opener to disc 2 [sic] that's hesitant, aimless and takes forever to take shape, but when it does, its discordant guitar parts draw poignancy from Andrew's gentle keyboard washes and cascades, and Barker's expertly brushed drums that is until the alien transmission ending. Subdued and watery is “Mig” and “Black Swan Black” is a gradually building epic that teases and tantalizes, but true to form, Partridge and company don't provide the predictable payoff and that, almost in and of itself, makes it wonderful.
Magical and mysterious, imaginative and fumbling, Monstrance provides evidence of both the best and worst aspects of improvisational music. What Monstrance is missing is that innate sense of flow and intuition that jazz musicians have ingrained in their DNA. Mind-blowing guitar parts, swirling keyboards and wild drum rides prevail, but there are lengthy stretches of inactivity and “strange just for the sake of being strange” movements (“Oodoo”) that you have to wade through to get to them. Patience is the key word here.
- Peter Lindblad
[Thanks to J. D. Mack]
Shepherd Express
April 04, 2007
Monstrance (Ape House)
Monstrance
April 04, 2007
With XTC on hold, founder-guitarist Andy Partridge amused himself recently by jamming with original XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews and Shriekback drummer Martyn Barker. The record button was on and some of the session has been released under the name Monstrance. The two-disc set contains spontaneously improvised music with echoes of spacey jazz and the more hermetic side of Krautrock. Tantalizing ideas are never resolved or developed past their initial glimmer; the germs of a dozen unrealized songs weave in and out. The best moments, however, don't add up to the sum of the album's running time.
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