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

Modney

Ascending Primes

Review by Gary Hill

This double CD instrumental set embodies the idea of art music. It’s freeform and often almost bewildering. It’s also, somehow strangely compelling. Classical music and jazz seem to merge into something that borders on the Rock in Opposition Movement. There are some really powerful passages and somehow the more you listen, the more the weirdness almost feels normal. It pulls you into its world.

This review is available in book (paperback and hardcover) form in Music Street Journal: 2025  Volume 4. More information and purchase links can be found at: garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2025.

Track by Track Review
1
                           
Ascender

Violin creates dramatic, if unusual lines of sound as this piece gets underway. That holds it alone for a time. Then the track gets some blasts of noisy distorted stuff. This is strange and quite avant-garde.

Lynx

Noisy, weird music with symphonic and electronic elements competing with one another is on the menu here.

Everything Around It Moves

Running over 25-minutse long, this is the epic of the disc. It comes in percussive and pounding with the stringed instrumentation almost feeling like some kind of industrial equipment. It turns more symphonic, but also quite freaky later. This gets very involved and pretty freaky with lots of instruments at play. It’s never what I would call anything close to mainstream, though. This is challenging, strange music. This gets more stripped back at times, for instance in a movement led by piano and noisier at others. Near the end the intensity on this builds. Then we get a release that gives us silence.

2
                      
Fragmentation And The Single Form
                                 
I. Source

Freaky strings, like music from a horror film soundtrack, gets this underway. It’s modulated with percussive punctuation that gives us a short silence. The weirdness rises back upward, though. It evolves from there getting into some seriously freaky territory at times.

II. Vox

Freaky and noisy, this does have some voices at times, but not in a traditional way. I think I can make out a monotonal voice at various points like an instrument. There are also some odd vocalizations heard at times. This is quite the freeform ride and evolution from start to finish. It really gets driving at times.

III. Song

At around three-and-a-half minutes long, this is the shortest piece of this suite. It’s also among the most mainstream. Mind you, this wouldn’t be called mainstream elsewhere, but given the competition, it feels like a hit single.

IV. Call

There is a bit of a weird back-and-forth, give-and-take vibe as this number gets underway. This gets into a full on driving jazz jam further down the road. There are still hints of weirdness, but it’s another point that’s more easily accessible. This eventually works out to feedback laden, noise music.    

Event Horizon
                           
I. Serrated Scream

This is noisy, freeform and quite freaky. It’s not far removed from a lot of the rest, though. Later the cut shifts completely. There are these blasts of fast-paced proggy jazzy stuff in the mix as fairly short bursts. Those are so cool and punctuate mellower jazz wanderings. That part is actually one of my favorite sections of the whole album.

II. Passacaglias

Mellower, nature like weirdness is on the menu as this gets underway. The freaky, jazzy explorations take over after a while. It’s slow moving in very measured steps. It gets into very ambient territory as the cut approaches the halfway mark. It turns freaky as it continues building outward. This explores mellower sonic space as it continues. Yet, it’s still freeform and unpredictable.

III. Ascenders

This thing has some of the coolest, driving jazz rocking stuff of the whole disc built into it. It’s a real powerhouse. Of course, that’s just one part of this. There are other portions that take it into different directions, including on part that feels a bit like an orchestra tuning up.

 
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.

    © 2025 Music Street Journal                                                                           Site design and programming by Studio Fyra, Inc./Beetcafe.com