Time, or at least the way we perceive it as passing, can be a strange old thing, and it’s something I’ve particularly noticed when listening to music. Sometimes it can seem to drag, indicating something is an unwelcome slog to get through. After cajoling by friends I tried to listen to the theme song from the last Bond movie and I discovered I’d lost some three minutes of my life with no impression of anything ever happening as the track was so dull that I just phased out. Well, with ‘Cosmic Evoked Potentials’, latest album by L’Ira Del Baccano, time did indeed fly by. Not for the aforementioned Eilish reason, but rather because I was so rapped up in it that nothing much else mattered, and after first play through I had to immediately hit the replay button.
I’d never heard L’Ira Del Baccano before, so dove into the album with nothing more than the impression given by the full on Prog title of the album which could well be a lost seventies Yes album waiting to resurface, and a trippy album cover that hinted at maybe a liking to certain substances that are currently illegal here in the UK without prescription. Opener ‘The Strange Dream Of My Old Sun’ certainly built on that first impression, gently played effects laden guitar chords building up with a psychedelic beat creating a sonic landscape that practically demanded a liquid light show to accompany it, those projections highlighting rising swirls of smoke, and of course I mean incense, okay? Meandering across a mellow ten plus minutes, there is an added break in the middle where they seemed to summon up the avatar of Rick Wright to further build up the wall of sound and drag time back to the days when Carnaby Street was hip and the centre of an underground as opposed to yet another row over priced boutiques.
Epic as the first track is, follow up ‘Genziana (Improvisation 42)’ leaves it in its wake, being a thirteen plus minute segment of a live forty five minute jam. This is the sort of number that if part of some jazz odyssey (one for the fans of Tap there) could so easily be an exercise in self-indulgence and ego over ability, but instead this Roman four piece make it flow and evolve naturalistically, the hypnotic looping beats of the rhythm section driving the sound forward and allowing the two guitars to improvise and explore, being somehow simultaneously loose and flowing yet cohesive, a quality that will have the Deadheads of the world grinning through their beards.
By comparison to what came before, ‘The Electric Resolution’, laden with the cries of an oscillator flies fast and hard into the realms of space rock, but with the lower tones of the guitars adding a hint of doom that indicates the space they are travelling through is not the bright and shining future of ‘Star Trek’, but rather the gritty realm of ‘Dark Star’. Without any break the music merges into title track ‘Cosmic Evoked Potential’, and that same stellar darkness comes even further to the fore, as if Captain Brock & Co. had dropped some brown acid and were just coming down before hitting the stage, a sense of menace and foreboding lacing its way through the music. After its dark forebears, ‘Eclipse Omega’, with its minimalistic tones, closes the album like a decompression in a chill out room, a short, peaceful rest to refresh the soul.
To make an instrumental album where each track has a unique character, and with such skill is no small achievement and for that L’Ira Del Baccano deserve praise and attention. Name checking as they do such musical influences as early Pink Floyd and Hawkwind shows that the band are respectful of their musical ancestry, and those ancestors can be rightfully proud of these worthy descendants.
(9/10 Spenny)
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