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2017-11-26

BLACK CUBE MARRIAGE - Astral Cube

Sick sick sick shit! Yes, this is how I fucking love my jazz!

Well, actually I like my jazz in a lot of ways - and I'm always working on broadening my horizon -, but I guess when for ages your almost only jazz has been John Zorn's "Naked City" and Painkiller albums, you'll always find yourself most excited when things get really "this is not music anymore".

And what those one, two, four, six... hell, I cannot count numbers that high... What the guys from Black Cube Marriage are letting loose on "Astral Cube" is a non-stop eargasms of "yeah for you idiots this is not music anymore, I get it, but fuck you!"




BLACK CUBE MARRIAGE - Astral Cube (LP) (2017)

I must confess: Rob Mazurek, Sao Paolo Underground, Jonathan Horne, Steve Jansen, Marriage - none of the names musically involved in this El Paraiso release are familiar to me, so I can't really put this into proper context, apart from what I'm hearing.

And that is - not sure if I mentioned it already - some sick shit. It's like Sun Ra Arkestra was jamming out wildy with Flying Lotus and Gnod.
The instruments used and abused here are plenty, as half of the line-up is performing on multiple toys: drums, guitar, bass, more drums, brass and wood wind instruments, loads of synths and electronics, even a vuvuzela is involved in this glorious mess.

There are bits and pieces you could brand as some kind of psychedelic rock or electronic music here, but seriously, this goes only as far as the utilized sound palette in those moments. The helmet under which all this explosiveness rages and detonates is always shitfucking sick advantgarde free jazz.

And that doesn't mean, this isn't really musical at all! No, quite the contrary!

Be it the thirteen-minute centerpiece "Syncretic Illumine" or the the six shorter tracks which are more focussed on one direction, while serving as single parts of a greater suite: "Astral Cube" bleeds musicianship and intuition through every pore of its running time.
There is beauty, emotion, transcendence within the excess. It washes over and empowers you.
And yes, it also bathes in weird noises for a huge part, because that just happens when a horde of free jazzers is on steroids and looking for trouble.

I would even dare to say that the ongoing struggle between building structure and bursting into chaos is the very cornerstone of this album. It's what keeps you on the edge of your seat, engaged and excited.

While not as blatantly brutal an ear assault as the grind jazz of Dead Neanderthals and some of their friends, this has more layers to it overloading / stimulating your senses, it's more like an "Ascension"-John Coltrane meets The Mars Volta kind of chaos.

It's brilliant.

It's some sick shit.



Highlights: Syncretic Illumine, Magic Sun Ray, Fractal Signal Clone



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