Electrum
Standard Deviation
© 2002 Electrum (794465705128)
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Instrumental progressive rock power trio whose second release features seven compositions, mostly rhapsodic in form, laced with orchestral keyboard arrangements, abundant odd time signatures, and more solo spots than their debut, "Frames Of Mind".
tracks
- 1 The Will To Power
- 2 Degrees Of Freedom
- 3 A Tense Bow... A Moving Target
- 4 The Impudent Piece Of Crockery
- 5 A Fugue State
- 6 Apartment Living
- 7 Seven Falls, Eight Rises
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COMPOSITION NOTES
The Will To Power (Foti)
Inspired by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. For the uninitiated, 'Der Wille zur Macht' (The Will to Power) was his answer to the riddle "What is life?". Given the subject matter, this rhapsody is constantly changing in tempo, meter, key, dynamics, etc. -- in short, it is as unclassifiable as the man who inspired it.
I may not agree with all of his notions, but anybody who wrote "Without music, life would be a mistake" is alright by me!
Degrees Of Freedom (Foti)
This tune is a departure from our usual compositions with the meter being mostly common time. It features various melodic sections and an unusual arrangement in the way the different instruments are introduced and interact with each other throughout the rhapsodic form, making this piece sound more like ECM label jazz than progressive rock for the most part.
A Tense Bow... A Moving Target (Foti/Musmanno)
The title is an obvious tie-in with "The Will to Power", alluding to Nietzsche's Overman - "the bow with great tension" - as the music is mostly comprised of leftover material from it, although it fits the contents perfectly: a three and a half minute rhapsody with a couple of tempo changes, three individual solos, and nine different time signatures.
The Impudent Piece Of Crockery (Kulju)
This piece was an attempt to bring the guitar into a more dominant role and remedy the occasional melodic abyss of our previous effort. The title comes from a line in the animated film "The Sword in the Stone" that gave my wife a good laugh. This piece is for her.
A Fugue State (Kulju)
This piece is characterized by some fairly disparate musical ideas: gentle melodies, aggressive guitar driven progressions, blues licks, semi-funky grooves with mean dirty organ, and a quiet but rhythmically unstable
fugue-like section.
In addition to the fugue-like section, the title comes from an appropriate
psychological condition.
From the Mental Health Infosource:
"A fugue state is a type of dissociate disorder in which the individual may flee from his or her usual life circumstances, take on a new identity and have no recollection of his or her previous life. Often the new personality is in stark contrast to the original one."
Apartment Living (Kulju)
This piece was written at 5am while the juvenile delinquents living below me were having an all night party and making sure that everyone could hear it. This on an evening where earlier the morons above me decided to do karaoke at 130dB. So I guess this piece falls into that self-righteous-contempt-for-all-mankind genre.
Musically the piece's first theme is in 9/8 with some dissonant chords stabbing over a pedal tone. The next theme moves to common time and attempts to settle into a more steady groove but is interrupted every two bars by dissonant and rhythmically strange phrases. An atonal guitar solo follows in 7/8 which sounds especially confusing due to the placement of the accents and the relative stability of the preceding section. The song concludes with a repeat of the 2ed and 1st themes.
I've since bought a house... it is quiet here... nice.
Seven Falls, Eight Rises (Kulju)
The title is an English translation of the Japanase proverb "Nana korobi, ya oki". The theme of determination is appropriate for this 14 minute piece as I have totally scrapped and rewritten the last two thirds of the piece 3 times. Thanks to my new computer based home studio, the latest incarnation explores a far more orchestral direction than my past work. At times it sounds like orchestra accompanied by rock band.
reviews
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Elegant. A pleasure to listen to over and over again.
author: Stephanie Sollow (Progressive World)Beautiful. Yes, that just about sums it up. Not pretty, as that implies something maybe too cute, too frilly, and too fussy. Beautiful. Elegant. A pleasure to listen to over and over again. The kind of release that the more you listen to it, are drawn in deeper, you find new things -- a synth phrase here, a guitar bit there, etc. Beautiful might also imply some of those very same things I said about pretty, but rest assured it is not. "Apartment Living" would be evidence of that. It's beautiful but it's tough. This is no shrinking violet...
A superb example of finely crafted progressive rock.
author: David Layton (Progression Magazine)Where Electrum stands on its own is the use of more symphonic elements. "The Impudent Piece of Crockery" incorporates some lovely textured guitar playing. "A Fugue State" runs though several styles such as hard rock, jazz, prog-rock and features some excellent syncopated melodies. There is not a naff tune on the disc. In short, this is a superb example of finely crafted progressive rock. Highly recommended.
An extravaganza of complex time signatures.
author: Vitaly Menshikov (ProgressoR)It's clear that the music that is presented on the second Electrum album "Standard Deviation" is as far from Neo as Neo itself is far from Rap (damn, why did I put this foolish word here?). Also, it's not your typical Classic Art-Rock album. It's kind of an extravaganza of complex time signatures that dance round the axis of each composition and crush it with the persevering regularity. "Standard Deviation" comes highly recommended to all those who are tired of a shady stability that, alas, is present on most of the contemporary works of Art-Rock genre.
Cutting edge performance and ingenious compositions.
author: Robert Silverstein (20th Century Guitar)On Standard Deviation, the group picks up from where groups such as Gentle Giant and Camel left off at the end of the '70s. Although Electrum's music is completely instrumental, their musical mastery speaks volumes. Both Foti and Kulju add in some fine synth keyboard passages making the music sound even more fully developed. The music on Standard Deviation falls under the instrumental prog-rock banner, but the trio's cutting edge performance and ingenious compositions will also impress jazz-rock fusion and New Age fans alike.