Label: Boing!
Release date: June 28, 2019
Production: The Aristocrats
Album length: 59.43 min.
Genre: Jazz Rock Fusion / Progressive Rock / Progressive Metal
Rating: 9.5 / 10
An album that, thanks to some funny twist of circumstances, kind of slipped past us and went into hiding when it came out at the end of last June. Gave us the slip. Outrageous. It absolutely can’t be allowed to stay overlooked, because we all know who and what we’re talking about. A whole lot of who and a whole lot of what. At least the five of us Slovenian fans of musical weirdness who know how to treat ourselves to the best have to say a word or two on the subject.
We’re talking about three intergalactic space riders, armed to the teeth (and beyond) with musical talent and know-how, who after a totally innocent, even unexpected jam in 2011 (Guthrie Govan jumped in at the last minute for Greg Howe, who was originally meant to be at that jam) decided to keep going in that direction. That’s how The Aristocrats came to be, repped by three superhero musicians of our time. That is, the aforementioned Guthrie Govan (guitar), Marco Minnemann (drums) and Bryan Beller (bass). An Englishman, a German and an American. They can all play multiple instruments and they all put out solo albums too (Beller’s one from last year – RockLine review, widely considered some of the best stuff to happen in progressive rock lately), while Minnemann plays absolutely everything himself on his albums and handles the lead vocals on top of that. We also know these guys from their work with eminent acts like Steven Wilson and Joe Satriani, among others, and if Zappa were still breathing today, all three of these geniuses would definitely be in his band.
We waited a bit longer for the fourth chapter of this fun musical story, an eclectic mix of escapes into the boundless expanses of jazz-rock fusion, as well as prog-rock and even prog-metal breakouts, with a whole pile of other genres (blues, funk, surf… fill in the rest yourself) finding their place in this melting pot, along with lucid pinches of world music spices and even folk-ethno elements. But in a single word: at its core, we’re talking about an utterly bonkers variation on jazz and rock. It’s as if The Aristocrats were taking the craziest musical orders onto their menu, ones that by all proverbial logic should never go together, yet in their language they always find universal harmony and a symbiotic character. Picture Einstein having to work out a proof at the level of atomic physics, facing a heap of math equations that were unsolvable up until that moment. The Aristocrats, you see, know the answer to everything.
On »You Know What« The Aristocrats remain theatrically mischievous rascals, spoiling the listener with a boundless fusion of whirlwind dialogue, »shooting« from three basic positions, and the most priceless realization is that, with all the incredible shenanigans of instrumental playing, these three masters keep opening up a huge amount of room for each other, for completely equal and equivalent room for each individual’s genius to unfold. More than that. As composers they write parts of songs for each other. For example, Govan writes a part in his composition that’s meant for Beller’s bass to dominate, and vice versa. As the very name of this band of boundlessly teasing lucidity and humoresques suggests, generated by their internalized sense for juicy chunks of cabaret absurdity, it’s clear that the late Frank Zappa would bow deeply to all this theater too, with a wide grin on his face.
The intro is jazz-rock (if we’re weighing the shares of “this and that” in the cheekily named composition D-Grade F*ck Movie Jam). As a rule, the character of all the compositions gravitates toward a fusion of jazz and rock, or jazz veering off toward metal, where the ultra-entertaining evolution of events is of course kept going by constant switching between »damn-near-broken« rhythmic signatures, which The Aristocrats »wade« through with feather-light ease and a constant theatrical charm for creating the feeling of events unfolding spontaneously (even though they’ve got a mapped-out road map), and which at every step leaves the listener gleefully stunned. That’s the basis. Among the utterly humorous »wonders« of the new album, Spanish Eddie certainly stands out too, where, as the funny title suggests, The Aristocrats deliberately bring in elements of Andalusian melos and flamenco, which Govan of course implements in harmony with his inner intelligence, the guarantee of a one-of-a-kind fusion. When We All Come Together is another mischievously grimacing parody adventure into the world of spaghetti western burlesque, and there’s always enough room for a track where avalanche-like metal phrasing takes center stage, as in Terrible Lizard, which is then complemented, in a new incarnation of this straight-faced theater of comic satire, by the track Spiritus Cactus. There are multiple guitar lines here (Guthrie memorizes things with multi-delay effects, and even uses synthesized lines played through the guitar). A bowl full of laughter. All the way through.
In essence, The Aristocrats don’t really surprise us anymore with a new album. But they astonish. They floor you. Their combination of eclectic, bonkers fusing is simply exceptional, unusual and therefore always seriously ignitive! The style and sound The Aristocrats have developed is unique, unusual and 110% theirs, and it effectively soaks up every idea-prank, however off the wall. Don’t worry. Alongside the extensive instrumental »wankery« (as the Brits freely call it in this kind of writing) of this holy trinity’s blasphemous orgasms, the album is weighted with an abundance of highly musical reconciliation and firmly formatted motif structures, which guarantee the compositions constant compactness and even more accessibility than you might have first hoped for. Precisely because of this feeling that the album is even »not heavy enough,« many a music gourmet, particularly the demanding sort, may be left a tad shortchanged and unsatisfied this time around, and will sigh out loud: »They don’t really show anything new!« The Aristocrats do flex their muscles a few times again, but the album is dominated by parts and a compositional structure that favor playing with an absolute feel and, for the most part, the trio’s great fondness for living in organic, that is, sonic pastels of an acoustic or »clean-sound« nature.
So? What we’ve got here is a new The Aristocrats album with a genius dose of witty expanses and breathtaking virtuosity that you can never get enough of or tire of. Of course, the starting point is that not everyone is receptive to the musical substance of albums in this line of work. In Slovenia, for instance, the consumers of this kind of music can be counted on the fingers of both hands.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. D Grade F*ck Movie Jam
2. Spanish Eddie
3. When We All Come Together
4. All Said And Done
5. Terrible Lizard
6. Spiritus Cactus
7. The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde
8. Burial At Sea
9. Last Orders
Line-up:
Guthrie Govan – guitar
Bryan Beller – bass
Marco Minnemann – drums
