Personally, I can think of more appropriate names for this album. For example: Playing In The Sandbox<\/i>, or Music For Music\u2019s Sake<\/i>, or possibly Who Gives A F**k What You Think, Anyway?<\/i><\/p>\n
But EEPS<\/i> it is, and it is all Marco Minnemann all the way\u2014the spectacular drummer whose recent resume includes playing with Steven Wilson, Mike Keneally, Tony Levin & Jordan Rudess, not to mention a host of other world-class musos\u2014and who makes every single noise heard on this album, covering drums, bass, guitars, keys and vocals all by his lonesome. <\/p>\n
The result is a sprawling jumble of a CD featuring 18 tracks with titles like \u201cLive Ghost,\u201d \u201cRight On Time And Out Of Tune,\u201d \u201cDead Ghost,\u201d \u201cDouche,\u201d and of course \u201cCheap As F**k And Awesome As Hell\u201d (asterisks Marco\u2019s). Most are instrumentals, though a handful feature vocals as well.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s an overall vibe here, it\u2019s free-form experimental of the rascally virtuoso variety, with occasional forays into irreverent prog-fusion. \u201cCheap As F**k,\u201d for example, feels like Miami Vice<\/i>-era Jan Hammer and a couple of guys from one of Frank Zappa\u2019s acrobatic live combos stopped by for a jam. \u201cOC DC\u201d is a snarky, shambolic two-minute surf-punk tune about an OCD superfan who can\u2019t manage to leave the house long enough to get to a show. And the first minute of the title track mostly features random power chords interspersed with belches, before evolving into a sort of math-rock jazz-prog jambalaya. <\/p>\n
Fair warning: the listener who clings to verse-chorus-verse structure\u2014or, hell, any sort of structure or predictability at all\u2014will be not just disoriented but quite possibly repelled at this point. <\/p>\n
If you pass the test presented by the first three tracks, though, some interesting\u2014and more accessible\u2014gambits lie ahead. \u201cLive Ghost\u201d actually has a bit of form and build to its rather spooky fusion vibe. \u201cSoul Dance\u201d brings acoustic guitar into the mix for a funked-up jam wrapped around a melodic candy center. \u201cObvious\u201d is Minnemann on his best behavior, a surprisingly straightforward pop-rock tune with vocals. Naturally he follows it with the thoroughly chaotic \u201cRight On Time,\u201d whose serial tempo shifts would require a calculator to compute.<\/p>\n
\u201cSushi Cat Doll\u201d is a minor epic, an 11-minute-plus suite with at least four distinct segments. An opening, rather Floydian bit of dreamy space-rock is interrupted by an interlude featuring raw power chords and distorted vocals, a brief nightmare before we fall back into the calmer dream-phase. And then there\u2019s a strangely elastic bit with electric guitar and piano, and another featuring drums, bass pedals, vocoder and random background chatter, and so on\u2026 it\u2019s Minnemann the musical mad scientist running loose in the lab, without a dose of Ritalin in sight.<\/p>\n
So, of course, the next track \u201cSunshine\u201d is a snappy, upbeat, rather Matthew Sweet-ish 2:56 power-pop number. That\u2019s just how Marco rolls.<\/p>\n
Highlights the rest of the way would have to include the ringing outro to the steady-building \u201cThe Split\u201d; the sheer agility of the time-signature jumps in \u201cDead Ghost\u201d; and the second mini-suite \u201cWhen I Was Gone,\u201d which builds from ambient Tangerine Dream atmospherics to a rocking vocal mid-section with lyrics out of a horror B-movie. The CD also features a trio of \u201cbonus tracks\u201d of similar diversity, including the cheeky \u201cTalking About LMR,\u201d wherein Minnemann layers distorted spoken-word snippets of an interview about the Levin Minnemann Rudess<\/a> project over a churning fusion bed. (No, seriously\u2026)<\/p>\n Marco Minnemann is the sort of musical free spirit for whom the adjective \u201cirrepressible\u201d was invented. Fearless, endlessly inventive, and tremendously versatile, Minnemann simply goes where the music takes him, over and over again. This is not an album for the faint of heart\u2014or for those who demand structure and predictability of any kind\u2014but if you\u2019re adventurous and curious enough to want to listen in as a precociously talented multi-instrumentalist lets his imagination run wild in the studio, EEPS<\/i> offers memorable musical moments aplenty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9453],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-43790","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-marco-minnemann","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43790"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}