Artists | Issues | CD Reviews | Interviews | Concert Reviews | DVD/Video Reviews | Book Reviews | Who We Are | Staff | Home
 
Progressive Rock CD Reviews

I Know You Well Miss Clara

Chapter One

Review by Gary Hill

What an odd name for a band. Well, once you get past that, though, you’ll find a cool disc here. It’s based in a progressive rock meets fusion sound. At times it lands close to King Crimson. At other times it’s more like Rock In Opposition. Other parts are more pure fusion. It’s never boring or trite, though. This is cool stuff, despite the odd name.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2013  Volume 6 at lulu.com/strangesound.
Track by Track Review
Open the Door, See the Ground

Keyboards dominate the start of this cut. It grows out after a time to some smoking hot fusion. This is a killer cut with some great guitar soloing and some sweet shifts and turns. It shifts later to some spacey sounds and then gets noisy. It gets pretty chaotic at times, then drops way down for mellow, but still pretty strange sounds from there.

Conversation
Keyboards open this track and hold it for more than a minute. This has a real freeform jazz vibe to it as it grows out. It starts to get into more of a mainstream jazz groove after a time. Later it works out to a mellower, melodic sound. The piece just keeps shifting and changing.
Pop Sick Love Carousel
More tasty fusion, this is more mainstream than some of the other tracks. There are some great retro keyboard sounds at times and the guitar just really lays down some great sounds. There is some scorching hot guitar soloing on the tune, too.
Reverie #2
Mellow atmospherics open this and the track builds out gradually from there. The guitar that rises up is quite tasty. It’s got a fire to it and yet is very melodic. Around the four minute mark it drops way down to some mellower music. It builds gradually back outward from there. The jam gets very intense later with some killer work from both the keyboards and the guitar. There are some segments later where it moves into territory similar to Red era King Crimson. This drops back to more freeform jamming that feels like Crimson, too. It’s got a sparse arrangement during that section. That gets built upon and intensified as they continue with the arrangement getting filled in as it does so. Then it drops back down to more melodic fusion from there.
Love Letter from Canada
This comes in tentatively with mellow space type music. This is one of the most consistent and purely melodic pieces here. At less than four and a half minutes in length, the cut is the shortest on the album.
Dangerous Kitchen
This starts out tentatively and is quite a mellow piece of music as it carries forward at first. There are some more intense space meets fusion elements that emerge later. As a saxophone soars overhead this kicks into high gear. As they continue this gets very intense. Piano solos over a mellower segment later. The saxophone leads a mellower, melodic jam after that. Guitar drives into more freeform territory that gets a bit weird. Then eventually the melodic movement returns for a time. They power that out to a screaming hot fusion jam with a lot of King Crimson in the mix.
A Dancing Girl from the Planet Marsavishnu Named After the Love
A fairly slow moving, guitar driven heavy segment opens this. It feels very much like King Crimson. After working out on this format for a time, it drops way down to a mellower, keyboard driven movement. There are bursts of loud craziness here and there as this continues. Eventually this works out to a more developed fusion jam. The guitar screams some soloing over the top after a while. A killer jazz groove ensues from there. The saxophone powers out some great soloing as this continues. As it builds out later it gets more rock oriented and comparisons to King Crimson are again appropriate. That section takes the piece to its close, also ending the album.
 
More CD Reviews
Metal/Prog Metal
Non-Prog
Progressive Rock
  
Google

   Creative Commons License
   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
    © 2024 Music Street Journal                                                                           Site design and programming by Studio Fyra, Inc./Beetcafe.com