DISEN GAGE – Bionika
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It’s been a quarter century since Russian avant prog band Disen Gage have been together, and I have been following their path since their first album The Screw-Loose Entertainment from 2004. There were at times long pauses between albums, and over time the band evolved into a scientific music laboratory, giving room to a more improvisational kind of music. Although the collective’s last album The Big Adventure (2019) was one of their rare more song-based efforts, they are back at the more abstract sounds on Bionika. This time, they teamed up with Alexei Borisov, Misha ‘MOX’ Salnikov and Eugene Voronovsky, three artists from the Russian ambient/noise scene, and this alone should be a hint what to expect on Bionika. Mostly it’s a meeting between the organic and the mechanic, illustrated by the half-baby/half-robot on the cover artwork. The different pieces sound very improvisational, playing around a central idea that gives each track its own personality. The opener Fibers Have Grown Together, at twelve minutes the longest piece on the album, slowly evolves into a dark industrial dub track with an electric guitar providing the recurrent leitmotif. The following title track is at ten minutes also a longer track, and a very spooky one at that. It is characterized by a small child singing erratically through a piece mostly carried by organ and electric guitar, reminding maybe of Pink Floyd circa 1968 on a weird acid trip. The Ghost Is The Shell is the most accessible track on the album. A danceable drumbeat, a prominent bass line and a distorted electric guitar transform this into a catchy industrial rock song that recalls the early Killing Joke. Free Prize is a stranger and more experimental piece, with distorted vocals and a lost sounding guitar, before things get denser again on the three-minute short The Tower Reverse, a technoid piece with weird effects and a haunting atmosphere. The album concludes with the fun Clap Your Hands, another ten-minute behemoth that distils all that preceded into a fun industrial rock piece with surf organ and a vocal sample that repeats the song title, making this sound like The B-52’s having turned into Hell’s industrial rock house band. I will refrain from grading this album, because how much you like it might depend on your daily mood. It’s an album that reveals its magic only after repeated listening. Even though it seems obvious that more improvisation than composition is at work, the six tracks still manage to sound all quite different from one another. Disen Gage manage to maintain their avant prog attitude, with this collaborative album full of psychedelia, industrialism. Dark ambient and noise. If you expect the band’s more song-based prog instrumentals from earlier in their career, you might be surprised if hopefully not disappointed. Those who have come to enjoy the band’s more adventurous side should be more than delighted. |
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6 songs |
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47:22 minutes |
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Genre: avant prog / ambient / industrial / improvisation Label: Addicted |
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