Label: Onion Boy Records
Release date: 13.09.2019
Album length: 87.19 min
Production: Bryan Beller
Genre: Art Rock / Progressive Rock / Avant-Prog
Rating: 10 / 10
We know Bryan Beller first and foremost as the bassist in Joe Satriani’s touring band, and he’s also one third of The Aristocrats, the kings of virtuoso lunacy. But Bryan Beller is far more than a bassist who might come across as just another nerdy sideman on stage with Satch. Beller is a genius. Why?
Albums don’t come as quickly for him as they do for his all-instrumental The Aristocrats partner in crime Marco Minneman, but his freshly released solo effort “Scenes From The Flood” is an incredibly ambitious piece of work with a huge amount of musical substance. It’s some of the best stuff that happened last year, and not just among progressive rock releases, but across the board. In music, period.
Beller is joined on the album by no fewer than 26 top-shelf virtuosos, all respected names in the world of constantly coaxing out adventurous rock shenanigans! Beller also tries his hand at guitar and keyboards here. From the first second to the last, this mostly instrumental album towers above any genre, and it’s impossible to pin a stylistic label on it! It’s a work of highly eclectic substance, with a full-blooded run of masterful switches between wildly different moods and slammed-in rhythmic twists, which means the album ignites at times dramatic, schizophrenic and foaming at the mouth, and at others unbelievably melodious and tender. Fans of Zappa, King Crimson, Yes and Pink Floyd must check it out, and so must fans of Animals As Leaders, Nine Inch Nails and Strapping Young Lad on the other side of the fence. The thing reaches even further, all the way into music that could serve as the soundtrack to some film (Hans Zimmer lovers, take note). An album where you run into everything, and one you won’t get to the bottom of any time soon. From metal to blues, electronic music, jazz, even classic prog rock and psychedelic shenanigans. Want a surprise? Expect the unexpected.
The album isn’t lucid in nature the way you might expect given Beller’s reputation and the renown that comes with the essence of The Aristocrats, or with Marco Minneman’s solo work. “Scenes From the Flood” is serious business all the way through. As for the atmospheric payoff, the moods on this album keep flipping constantly, just like its compositional structure, which is really the starting point for these remarkable swerves between vibes. It’s a brilliant mastery of blending and fusing genres in a way that you’d first think is impossible. But Bryan pulls it off with feather-light ease. The album was made over a long time, several years. A decade. Beller diligently pieced it together in his head the whole way, like a fiendishly difficult puzzle, or, for those of you who read Dylan Dog, maybe I can serve up a more fitting comparison: a ship model built from a billion tiny pieces, a thing you never get to the bottom of. Beneath this musician’s otherwise playful and always cheerful nature, then, lies a soul in search of perfection. And that perfection, that unfinished and endless perfection, is what “Scenes From A Flood” radiates, from the first second to the last of its vivid and exceptionally rich musical substance. The mostly instrumental album also boasts one vocal track. It’s an extremely dark yet bombastic epic, or rather a progressive art rock mini suite, Army Of The Black Rectangles, for which Bryan found inspiration in the song Angels & Exits. The latter is the only song on this album not composed by Beller, contributed by Janet Feder (a solo artist known for working with Fred Frith, the Henry Cow “RIO/avant oddball”).
I don’t want to ramble, because no review ever gets to the bottom of a record like this. Simply put, its many layers and the witty way it pushes ideas out into the fields of undiscovered musical dimensions are so challenging, at times avant-garde, theatrical, so free-spirited, that using words, as our rationalism generates them, especially with albums like this, quite frankly limits you and to some degree “cripples” the experience, and is entirely superfluous. Only one thing remains. And it’s very simple. Switch off. Surrender to this kind of music. Yes. It contains plenty of transcendental moments, moments that shake you to the other side, even scare you. An album you can listen to nonstop and never get tired of. An album that will enrich and reward you with every next spin. Spiritually too. It’s exactly what only the art of music can offer the consumer in its original mission. It simply doesn’t get more honest than this.
If I may add a personal note from the author, and those who’ve followed RockLine regularly since 2006 know all too well that this guy hasn’t reviewed and heard just three albums in his life, this is one of the best works I’ve heard in recent years, and that’s with my own constant, intense immersion in the ins and outs of rock ‘n’ roll.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. The Scouring Of Three & Seventeen
2. Volunteer State
3. Everything And Nothing
4. A Quickening
5. Steiner In Ellipses
6. Always Worth it
7. Lookout Mountain
8. The Storm
10. The Flood
11. Bunkistan
12. As Advertised
13. Army Of The Black Rectangles
14. The Outer Boundary
15. Angles & Exits
16. The Inner Boundary
18. World Class
19. Sweet Water
20. Let Go Of Everything
MUSICIANS:
Bryan Beller – bass guitar, keyboards, guitar, vocals
Guitarists:
Nili Brosh (Michael Jackson ONE, Tony MacAlpine, solo artist)
Darran Charles (Godsticks, The Pineapple Thief)
Mike Dawes (solo artist)
Janet Feder (solo artist, Fred Frith)
Guthrie Govan (The Aristocrats, Hans Zimmer, Steven Wilson)
Mike Keneally (Frank Zappa, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, solo artist)
Jamie Kime (Zappa Plays Zappa, Jewel, Dr. John)
Teddy Kumpel (Joe Jackson, solo artist)
Jake Howsam Lowe (Plini, The Helix Nebula)
Rick Musallam (Mike Keneally, Ben Taylor)
Mike Olekshy (Max Morgan, Alison Ray)
Griff Peters (Mike Keneally, Billie Myers)
John Petrucci (Dream Theater)
Joe Satriani (Joe Satriani, Chickenfoot)
Drummers:
Ray Hearne (Haken)
Gene Hoglan (Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, Testament, Death)
Nate Morton (Cher, The Voice, American Idol house band)
Joe Travers (Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Zappa Plays Zappa)
Keyboards, strings, harmonies, sitar, percussion,…
Christopher Allis (Deana Carter, Denny Laine)
Paul Cartwright (Portugal The Man, Cee Lo Green, Mary J. Blige)
Julian Coryell (Alanis Morrissette, Jewel, Aimee Mann)
Fred Kron (Colin Hay, Donna Summer, Anchorman 2)
Evan Mazunik (Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, solo artist)
Matt Rohde (Christina Aguilera, Jane’s Addiction)
Rishabh Seen (Arijit Singh, Mute The Saint, solo artist)
Leah Zeger (Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Hans Zimmer)
