Artist: IQ
Label: Giant Electric Pea
Released: 2004
Compared with its predecessor “The Seventh House” (2000), “Dark Matter” once again leads the way in its usual helping of mellotron and church-sounding keyboards (organ), while the sheer variety of motifs it captures makes it more of an exploratory record, meaning less compact and more fragile. The integral role, by a mile ahead of every other instrument, goes to the striking keyboards of the genius Martin Orford (Jadis), and Michael Holmes’ guitar fits around them like it was poured to measure. That’s what builds the incredible magic and all the beauty of IQ’s one-of-a-kind sound and their expression in rock music. The production is very British, with the melodic, thick-strung bass of the seasoned John Jowitt (ex Pendragon, ex-Arena) forming a superb contrast to the front line (vocals/guitar/keyboards). Paul Cook’s drums are a shade livelier in the mix than on “The Seventh House”, and the drummer serves up even more variety in his playing, with excellent fast rolls and tasteful rhythm-breaking. The cherry on top is Peter Nicholls’ ever-unique vocal, which always delivers some exceptional poetry too, and thanks to that IQ, as a singular phenomenon in the world of rock music, more than earn a name like that.
The opening song is the hardest-hitting on the record, a proper opener for gigs. A long track full of variations. The chorus holds a gorgeous melancholic motif, the total opposite of the liveliness in the rest of the song. The mellotron pulls toward early Genesis, and the finale, built on massive church organ, is superb, with Holmes sending a beautiful guitar solo flying through it. In places the “feel” of this song takes you back to IQ’s eighties era and the album “Nomzamo” (1987).
Masters of conjuring up different moods, they deliver that in spades in Red Dust Shadow, tenderly with acoustic guitar, with Nichols once again “killing it” with his extreme depth and sensuality. The punchier motif is superb, backed here and there by bass pedal that lifts the dynamics in an otherwise dreamy song. You Never Will continues from the previous song without a break, and it’s very tasteful. It’s a superb, flowing track with a gorgeous melody, the main motif masterfully spiced up here and there with broken, picked-out drum fills, and the chemistry is flawless. Space-y keyboards and mellotron coexist in perfect symbiosis. A song with a head and a tail, yet with progressive detours added masterfully on top of the basic idea, in the most splendid way, the unique IQ way. Born Brilliant carries an interesting set of samples that, in the intro, draw parallels with Pink Floyd and their song Welcome To The Machine (1975). Soon after, an incredibly cohesive rhythm line uncompromisingly cracks open the meat of the track. The keyboards work through the song like a gentle wrapping that ties together its hard riff structure, while Nicholls’ singing brings all the triumph of the extreme contrasts the song has to offer. The beat pulls toward the Genesis beat, say in Supper’s Ready. The solo break in the middle of the song is superb, where the cohesive dialogue between guitar and keyboards literally blows the listener right out of their skin.
Harvest Of Souls is a track 24.5 minutes long. But this is no stretched-out drone, it’s a true symphonic epic, in the style of the greatest masters of epic-writing, Yes or Genesis. Of course it’s got a heap of “Gabriel-isms” (Nicholls’ vocal especially loves to veer toward Peter Gabriel) and “Genesis-isms”. Nicholls sings wonderfully, right on the money in the verses, sensually shifting his vocal color, and the verses literally come alive. The poetry of Harvest Of Souls attacks the USA, no holds barred. How evil is the boundless, ultimate executioner of human souls.
Verses:
The sky lights up above America,
The world is lost, but still loves America,
The hand of God defends America,
And who would not defend America,
So praise the Lord and raise the ammuniton high, raise it high,
High where you can, we will shoot you where you stand.
Next comes a proper Howe-style guitar break, with lines deconstructed in the manner of that guitar giant, machine guns hammer in, a dose of psychedelia, and the atmosphere jumps unpredictably to another level. In the middle the track has a superb switch to an apocalyptic atmosphere with a whiff of total war, conjured up by guitar and keyboards in crossfire. In “feel” it pulls toward the eternal The Gates Of Delirium (Yes, 1974). And despite all your experience and all your insight, you still turn to the “dark side” (“And still I claim to the fear of the dark”). Harvest Of Souls is a song built out of endless motifs that flow into one another in completely unpredictable ways, and it has absolutely everything. Instrumental exploratory detours, sensual and tender, utterly simple melodies and subtler passages that can defuse the anger of the tense mood, and all of it adorned by Nicholls’ singing, which, in a single word, is downright phenomenally immersed.
In the seventies, putting together a record of this caliber was nothing special, but today works of art like “Dark Matter” are a unique and endangered species of beauty. So here they are, the new I.Q. in all their glory.
Lineup
Peter Nicholls – vocals
Martin Orford – keyboards, backing vocals
Mike Holmes – guitar, keyboards
John Jowitt – bass guitar, bass pedal
Paul Cook – drums, percussion
Tracklist
1. Sacred Sound (11:40)
2. Red Dust Shadow (5:53)
3. You Never Will (4:54)
4. Born Brilliant (5:20)
5. Harvest of Souls (24:29)
Album length: 52:16
