“Yyyepp! Another one for lovers of tones and tones on tones in a progressive e-rock a la King Crimson”
1 Farmington High School 1 26:33 2 Farmington High School 2 10:54 3 Farmington High School 3 12:42 4 Farmington High School 4 17:37 5 Farmington High School 5 12:26 6 Farmington High School Soundcheck 12:51 Iapetus Records
(DDL 93:06) (V.F.)
(Ambiospherical, neo-prog electronic and abstract music)
Three years after The Room of Plenty, centrozoon releases a series of recordings made during a tour on the American East coast in November 2016. And it's without Tobias Reber that Bernhard Wöstheinrich, on synth and sequencer, and Markus Reuter, on Touch Guitar U, have offered a short series of concerts of an EM more than audacious where the senses have to be in another dimension in order to follow the hazardous paths of 217 XIII. It's with a series of jerky sequences which crowd in side blows that Markus Reuter's guitar spreads its flavors roaming on a bed of reverberations. The movement of the sequencer exhausts its keys which look for themselves in a heavy electronic envelope where the lamentations of the guitar and the synth are trumpeting like two different species of elephants on the point to merge in a new entity. Illustrated as description? And nevertheless, it's completely corresponding with the universe of centrozoon whom anti-music is at the service of the abstracted music lovers or of a fan of a symphony in fission. More convenient to the effects of synth than guitar, the 1st part of Farmington High School 1 always evolves in the tumult to reach a point of no return and overturn into a progressive electronic rock around the 11th minute. We fall in a King Crimson ground with a one-armed drummer who tries constantly to thwart the long tortuous soloes of a guitar which grumbles more than sings. My degree of curiosity follows the curve of a long structure full of collapses, but which also hides good moments, where the moods are constantly colorful by hollow breezes, scattered blows of the sequencer and effects of guitar which are clearly more audacious than those of Robert Fripp. And it's all the universe, and the concept, of 217 XIII. You should not expect to sit down and to dream lazily, nor to think of dancing or of swaying the hips, in front of the 5 segments of this album. Everything is a story of experiments from Markus Reuter's Touch Guitar U8. The first 4 minutes of Farmington High School 2 are a good delight of ambient music. The chopper falls afterward. The atmospheres are dissipated by a tumult of knockings and sequences of which the soles of clogs scatter the nice Mellotron effects. Afterward, a strange homogeneity forms, giving to Farmington High School 2 a musical aura that makes of it the most beautiful title of 217 XIII.
There are good phases of progressive rock of flooded here, just like in Farmington High School 3 whose evolution crosses light breezes, which make ring some bells and make sing a solitary guitar, in a heavy resounding passage which unravels its fury on a good mid-tempo. Farmington High School 4 follows this upward curve after an introduction stained of sonic doodles which roll in a rather serene plain. The tension goes up rather easily with the wild imaginings of a six-strings which quietly builds its empire of distortions. The good moments here will please to the fans of a heavy and mortuary music where the friction of tones looks like an out of tune symphony. Farmington High School 4 is undoubtedly the most disturbing, the most puzzling of the titles on this 217 XIII. The good moments are always present, although less here, and bring us little by little to accustom us to the sound arsenal of this recording of which the softest boldness of centrozoon is in Farmington High School Soundcheck. And it's this principle of duality that makes the listening of this album always a little less painful. To taste part by part, by beginning with the end, and we let ourselves being cajoled by this universe where the storms arise by of so few things.
Sylvain Lupari (April 24th, 2017) *****
Available at centrozoon Bandcamp