Gong possessors ANTA, of Bristol legend, sutured to the might of international man of Italo mystery Antoni Maiovvi, who is definitely not from Bemmie before it got poncy. What is the score?
Well. I am here for PURE MUSIC. And how pure it is! Pure as the water from the mountains of the Gods. As I understand it, Herr Maiovvi wrote a bunch of tracks and ANTA turned them into a very large and tumescent SOUND.
This may seem like a ridiculous thing to say, but as ANTA sport not one but two bone fide, genuinely-very-good-at-sound sound engineers. there is a lot of sound to their sound. It is not enough to own the gong, the way of prog is also to make that gong sound LARGE like PLANETS and such. Very SOUND, is my point.This is, as I understand it, ANTA’s first recording with their guitarist Ben Harris. And I was partly expecting this record to be a very prog effort — all extended prog wig-outs from Harris and all that prog stuff. And while this is definitely in that kind of progland, it’s not quite self-.consciously ridiculous. What it does do well — and this is the sharp bit in getting Maiovvi involved — is sound like it’s not written by people who are into rock.
Plenty of sections involve overlapping beats — like a bassline that’s a pickup from the fourth beat and a drum that looks to settle on a third beat, two note marches in the keys — which is in my head more characteristic of dance music production rather than rock stuff. Rock musicians tend not to organise around beats in the same way — which is to say that this might be very SOUND it’s also somehow also dance music after a fashion. It’s also pretty much the case that there’s very little in the way of solos on this record — there’s a lot of interlinking parts which all complement each other, but not always in an obvious way, and each feels like a “piece” rather than a set of parts. Melody lines in the bass, keys, guitars, guitar playing one-note riffs — plenty of smart construction and not an ounce of indulgence. Which is doubtless anathema to the prog music they’re meant to be making but, for my money, I’d rather decent composition that swings and drills than overwrought time signature changes and all that wizard bollocks that should’ve had prog shot a long time ago. Also very SOUND. So much SOUND. Everywhere, it is.I should say there is plenty of continuity with the previous record — big riffy dramatic bits, a bass sound you could feed a family of four on, gongs, bowed cymbals, fluttering synth drones. It still does SOUND all over your probably beard. But maybe this composed direction is something like a push in a different direction — like a soundtrack, but if soundtracks weren’t just a single theme with minor variations. Narrative parts pulling all over the place, but working towards and around central themes. Like actual composition.
It’s been a long time coming, but this is a blistering slice of full, heady rock shit all over my face-ears. Next time maybe a smaller gap between records though lads. SOUND.-Kev Nickells-
