Chromb! – Cinq (Dur Et Doux) – This opening track is kind of like having mice run around your feet, or pigeons maybe, French ones? I’m pretty sure this isn’t what Chromb! sounded like last time around? Or maybe they did, who knows what’s going on here? Rather like it when we don’t really know what’s going on in terms of music. Hang on, things are suddenly making perfect sense in some kind of off-hinge way, this is, once you tune in, very much the same rather musically challenging Chromb, they’re just pecking in different ways. Somewhere around Pauvre Brobre it all starts to make perfect sense or maybe it all starts to make no sense in any kind of way which is strange because back in the day Chromb were the most perfect of properly progressive Prog Rock bands, one of those bands that took you way out beyond most people’s notions of what Prog is and in the traditions of the very best prog bands, really challenged you, but now? Now they’ve just gone brilliantly mad! They really do peck during Le Prince, now that is seriously differently challengingly good! The crucial thing, however they’re putting it all together, the vital thing is that Chromb always have such strong tunes, great pieces, songs that really do let you hang on to them. Back in 2020 with the Le livre des merveilles album the Lyon band were just about colouring within the lines, they have no regard for the lines now and actually when you do go back to their brilliant last album from three years ago, it is very obviously the same band, they’ve just taken it all several steps further, they’ve constructed on it, they’ve deconstructed it – actually you progheads should probably start in 2020 or maybe even further back with 2016’s equally vital 1000, go back (there is nothing more proggy than the eight minutes and forty-three seconds of Bobby on that 2016 album), go back then work yourself up to this new one rather than leaping straight into Chromb’s beautifully challenging here and now! Of course if you already know them then, rather like we just did, you’re gonna want to dive straight in with any notion of a second thought
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When you do go back and check, when you do go back to make sure your memory wasn’t playing tricks on you, then the artistic progression here on this new album really is positively shocking. Love the way they’ve challenged both us and themselves – Le Prince is so so good – they’re almost defying you to go with them, and the start to Rongongonfre is so gloriously confusing, the bit before it goes all squelchy and then the bit where they fall up the stairs and all the pots and pans land in just the right places, preposterous! Brilliant! Love it! of course they are singing in French so we’re missing out on most of what they’re singing about, and well that closing six and a half minute track, Et Des Couteaux, whatever they are actually singing about, is just perfect.
The new Chromb album isn’t due out until the 3rd November but hey, I’ve been listening to it most of the day so you may as well have my tuppence worth now before the release date flies by and things get left out in the rain again and anyway, if you don’t know them, you’ve goy a couple of months to explore their richly rewarding back catalogue before this one hits the street, it would be best if you were to get to know Chromb’s past before hand, everything they’ve even done, including this new album, is highly recommended and this new one will make far more sense if you are familiar with their musical past (not sure about that cover ar though).
Bandcamp will tell you more
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Hey Colossus – In Blood (Wrong Speed Records) – There’s a massive hook of a riff three tracks into this new album, sometimes that’s all it takes to pull you in and make you want to explore more, sometimes that’s all it takes to engage you as a listener, Perle has you asking what else is there here waiting to catch you, if there was any kind of resistance, they’ve already broken you down and you’re flowing with this new Hey Colossus album and the bones at the back of their cave. Something like a dozen albums in now, they’re a band who have just always been there quietly doing their noisy thing. Actually Hey Colossus have never been that noisy, they’ve always been a subtle band, a considered sound. a little more depth, a knowing way. The English post-rock sextet, yeah, I know, a lazy thrust into a neat little post-rock box there when really they’ve always been nothing less than a rather strong, rather timeless, rather forward looking (rather overlooked?), rather good rock band. They’ve been doing it for around twenty years now, doesn’t time fly.
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Back there in 2020 they landed a massive album on a locked-down world, their wonderfully ambitious, rather dynamic and at times gloriously lush Dances/Curses, it kind of passed a lot of us by what with no gigs and no touring and musical life in terms of touring a new album and some excellent new songs all on hold. Some might say, that 2020 album was a musical high for the consistently good band who’ve always had half an eye on the better aspects of the American alt-rock scene of the 90s. They released a classic and as well received as it was, it deserved a lot more, we were as guilt as anyone, it passed us by for a month or two, but that was the pandemic, art shows cancelled after month of work, bands falling apart, great albums going under the radar. Word was it might have been the end of it all for a band who’ve always had a strong knowing cult following. Seems they pulled themselves together, went to work in the studio, pulled people together and here we are, end of Summer 2023 and In Blood…
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And there they are, a halfway House? A band on all fours? Long days, longer nights? Far from it, it is a stark opening, almost stripped back, black and white? Stark, not quite the only way to go but you feel it is the right way and as stripped back as it is it is still a massive sound, a big beast of an album, a positive next step and not just another release. It has only been three years, you can’t call it a comeback, they’re not born again but then they almost are and it almost is (and you can hear them coming). And yes, it is so very easy to take the things right under your nose for granted and with every play more of this fine album is revealed and as well as being the almost perfect follow up to Dances/Curses, this might just be one of their best albums yet and well, not that they necessarily want to hear it, but the time for Hey Colossus might just be still to come. In Blood is a strong, positive and rather recommended new album from a band who really deserve more attention than they actually get.
Find the album and all you need to know on Bandcamp
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Reformat – Precursed (Fearbone) – London’s Reformat are back with more of that slightly heroic (massively heroic?) thing they do, they say “it’s a darker and more direct follow-up to their acclaimed debut and that the music was created in an attempt to resist the pull of nihilism, resulting in a sound that reflects moments of jubilant beauty caught between creeping anger and grief”. it is that swelling post-rock thing, instrumental save for the synthesised hints of voices, one for fans of bands such Genghis Tron, 65daysofstatic, pg.lost, and especially Three Trapped Tigers although there is more to them than just another one of many doing this thing. True, it is mostly (that is a crucial word – mostly, not all) a familiar post-rock blueprint and yes it does tend to be on the same mostly uplifting mostly hopeful mostly positive level, kind of familiar, that epic bit followed by quiet bit then epic bit again thing, maybe playing it a little too safe but they do do their chosen thing very very well and if you like that uplifting post rock explosions up there in your sky kind of thing they do it rather well…
Find the new Retrofit album on Bandcamp
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Takh – Takh – (Consouling Sounds) – Takh are from Ghent, Belgium and this album has been kicking around here patiently waiting for some for some much deserved attention since the middle of Summer, what can I say? Not enough hours, things to paint, shows to prepare for. It is an album that keeps calling me back though, a darkly lush, rich, moody Swans flavoured thing of beauty. A smouldering thing, shimmering light and shade, intriguing, epic, far too rich to talk of mere Goth or dark wave or post rock or any of those things that are touched on..
Takh found themselves somewhere back in 2015, when The Black Heart Rebellion (a band we have encountered and indeed featured a number of times before) invited Annelies Van Dinter as guest musician on the record People When You See The Smoke and fostered a common love of or maybe for for doom and gloom, that and the raw approach of music that wrenches the soul. it was something that made them write new music together, Annelies and a number of B Lack Hearts. “Inspired by the likes of Swans, Low or Woven Hand, they challenge themselves to focus on pure intensity, not shunning the experiment and questioning what truly moves them in life”. This self- titled debut album was released back in late May and yes we have taken far too long to mention it or their stated aim that is “to craft atmospheric, slow-burning doom-influenced music that reaches into the listener’s soul, but also embraces experimentalism and allows the band to explore whatever it is that moves them, wherever that may lead”. The Takh sound is as big as it is dark, it is inviting, it does pull you in should you wish it to, it will reward you if you are of a mind to let it, it is an acquired taste but then most good art is..
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THE ORGAN 
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