Customer Reviews

Quadropus

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With its latest release Quadropus, Santa Cruz-based band Estradasphere continues to cement into the minds and ears of any self-respecting music fan the repeatedly proven belief that it is one of the most inspiring, creative and all-around original groups on the independent music scene in America today.

Quadropus is in essence a summation of both the numerous musical and recording styles the group has explored in the past, and also a peak into the future of four musicians whose next move is anything but predictable. This work is a synthesis of the raw energy of It's Understood, the band's 2000 debut studio album, and the workhorse production ethics of that album's 2001 follow up, Buck Fever. Gone are the humorous dialogue and video game interludes that peppered those albums, executed most effectively on Buck Fever. On this masterful collection are songs that are treated as just that - stand-alone tracks to be listened to, absorbed and enjoyed for each of their own merits, and many merits there are.

The album opens with a track that has been in Estradasphere's live repertoire for nearly three year - a traditional Greek ballad titled Mekapses Yitonisa. Throughout the tune's use of odd time signatures and the band's creative instrumentation, one can begin to anticipate the audio feast in store for the rest of the album. This is no more apparent than when Jason Schimmel's distortion guitar kicks in for the kill, and then drops out again, replaced by effects-driven wah for an appropriately funky and cool effect.

Other standout tracks include perennial fan favorite King Krab Battle, inspired by Japanese cooking show The Iron Chef. This tune progresses and builds through intense layering over an infectiously catchy rhythm until it sends the listener over the top with what sounds like a 100-member marching band that would make the organizers of the Rose Bowl Parade proud, and that's just for starters - wait until you get to the final three minutes of the song!

Schimmel on guitar and Tim Smolens on bass (along with enough guest drummers to make Spinal Tap's head spin, among them original drummer Dave Murray) lay down grooves on tracks such as this which, while being a fusion of many different musical styles, is unique to Estradasphere. Timb Harris (violin, trumpet) and John Whooley (saxophone) counter and complement the rhythm sections and each other perfectly throughout. One of the finest examples of this unique concoction of Estradasphere groove is heard on A Car Ride in Idealistic Ethiopia, an epic track which literally spins through a radio dial of distinct yet connected rhythms, melodies and jams. One almost wishes that they would've taken this a step further, and really distinguished the various jams as completely independent songs, providing more contrast in the dial spinning. This would come at the loss of a very cool continuous groove throughout the track, though, and is only a minor complaint.

There are fine moments for each of the band members here, and a couple of tracks would not seem out of place on solo albums by Whooley, Schimmel or Smolens. However, they work much better when performed in the cohesiveness of this incredibly talented group of musicians. Rougher-edge Estradasphere fans will not be disappointed by any lack of "heaviness" on Quadropus. Jungle Warfare alone will have those with weak constitutions running for the hills and the streets flowing with the blood of the non-believers. Secret Chiefs 3 and Mr. Bungle's Trey Spruance contributes a unique addition to the track, proving that metal and noise coexist beautifully. Body Slam also provides some chest-vibrating moments, albeit with a lighter air.

While the album overall displays a bit more cohesiveness and unity as a single piece of work throughout it's first half, Quadropus is an album which shows the maturing of a band that has not lost its roots or its ability to have a damn good time. Buy this album. See Estradasphere live. Take your friends.

It looks like an intriguing idea on paper: a wide-ranging batch of electic songs and styles that you'd normally have to make your own mix-CD to hear, except that it all comes from one band. Estradasphere is an unquestionably unique group with pretty impressive musicianship, seemingly influenced by free jazz and middle Eastern music just as much as by TV/video game themes, heavy metal and the Iron Chef. Should be a wild ride. Right?

Well.. variety is great, but the result here seems to be a mix that everyone finds something different to like in. I've played it for several people and everyone's had their picks of favorites and throwaways - and no two people's choices seem to match up. You'd probably be hard pressed to find someone who likes everything on offer here unequivocally.

So let's take a look. The trad. Greek tune "Mekapses Yitonisa" is a very promising start, sinuous and almost hypnotic despite the weird time signatures. "Dubway" is an acapella/techno groove that gets repetitive, but has a quirky charm all its own. Ditto "Jungle Warfare," except that it's a bludgeoning death-metal track complete with bone-pounding drums and goofy growls instead. "King Krab Battle" is pure cheese - but quite fun despite that - portraying the soundtrack to an epic cartoon fight with violent horns and a kind of silly grandiosity. It's what you might hear for a Japanese anime production of a Celebrity Deathmatch episode.

The hardest stretch for me to take is the "Hardball"/"A Car Ride..." segment. (They're listed as two separate tracks but might as well add up to one extended monster, as they seem like two parts of a whole.) It's certainly ambitious - a super-tight avant-prog suite tinged with polka in an almost-classical format with a generous helping of Indian influence and enough twists and turns to write a math textbook on - but I don't hear anything holding it together. Cutting from one section to the next without any transitions would work in a small dose, but 20 straight minutes of it gets old fast. There's no flow to the whole thing, just an extended series of unison shifts that seem to be there for their own sake.

I guess the generic-template factor is why Quadropus leaves me somewhat flat. "Crystal Blue" is a doowop-ish 60s throwback that recycles every Chuck Berry/Beach Boys cliche known to man, but it's *just* a bunch of cliches, nothing more. "Bodyslam" is a standard WWF rap-rock theme, but *just* a generic imitation and nothing more. It would be one thing if there was a self-parody aspect to the whole thing, but these tunes are just presented straight-faced, and the stuff they're imitating isn't funny enough to stand on its own. The same goes for "At Least We'd Have Today," which is their take on top 40 pseudo-soulful, heard-one-heard-em-all R&B ballads.

I don't know. Maybe I'm missing the joke.

At least there's no video game music, which is why I made this my first pick (and whether it's a better E-sphere intro than the others I can't say). Since my opinion seems to be different every time I listen, and since everyone seems to enjoy it differently anyway, I'll settle at 3.5 stars. It's worth some good listening for the sheer outrageousness of their wide-ranging approach - and the musical skill with which it's all pulled off - and at the very least, they deserve big points for trying. Beyond that, I guess you'll have to decide for yourself.

This third studio outing for the very alternative and very talented band is the least of their three releases. It begins well in familiar gypsy-music territory and moves on to some inspired originals such as Dubway, but falters badly after song six, a typically interesting instrumental with their signature brand of fast genre-hopping rhythms. Song seven is a throwaway, '50s sound-a-like, rock-n-roll song, song eight is another of their ugly forays into death metal that serves only to disrupt the atmosphere created (and only partially disturbed by song seven) by the preceding tracks, song nine is a frankly crap rock song with a WWF theme (mega-fans will laugh and love the sheer kick-ass silliness of it, but not I), and song ten is an amusing (the first time around only) but ultimately depressing take on fulsome R Kelly ballads. A terrible finale after Buck Fever's unique majesty. The usual several minute wait ensues after the final track fades out and we get a brief reprisal. Then it all ends. I got the feeling listening to the second half if this album that the guys in the band were not altogether capable yet of making a memorable album, rather their creative energy expired after six songs and they filled the remaining void with mediocre songs far behind the excellence their past achievements.
I am a fan of this band and have their other releases, including the wonderful live album, The Silent Elk of Yesterday. However, I cannot recommend this album much, as I feel the band have failed to live up to their previous two recordings' quality by a long shot. As I said, it is a great EP with four very sub-par songs added on. Decide for yourself whether you want to spend the money.

Most of the songs on this album are studio recordings of old songs that Estradasphere has been playing live, some of them for a very long time. Those who are already fans of the band and have seen them live have probably heard many of these songs before (I'd heard 7 of the 10 before I got this) but that's not to say that this album is any less great. The studio work on these songs is incredible, providing subtleties that allow for endless repeated listening and enjoyment. Speck, for instance, has been given a string section among other things that just make it beautiful and serene to listen to while KKB has something like a 13 piece brass section to boast that just make these already amazing songs that much better. There's also some new gems like the extremely heavy jungle warfare featuring the drummer from Cephalic Carnage, showing Estradasphere definately has not lost its edge, and the pants-splattering Car Ride in Iealistic Ethiopia that is a testament to how incredibly creative this band is. There's more I could say but I'm tired of writing so I'll leave it at that. It's a great album so get it.

Estradasphere has done it again, as we all knew they would. This album finds the band mellowing a bit, if only in terms of sticking to a theme in a particular song and milking it beautifully, featuring less in-song genre changes than before. But, thankfully, the meaty guitars and Metal Madness are here in spades, and in all the right places.
The album features some amazing tracks, my favorite being King Krab Battle (inspired by Iron Chef), which is an increadibly huge and roaring monster of a song, which one day MUST be played by a full marching band in the Rose Bowl, or the universe just isn't fair.
While not every song on the album hits the sweet spot for me (Crystal Blue being the stand out there-a fine fine song, but just a little too out of place on the album in my opinion), overall, I would call this an amazing album. I expected nothing less, and was not disapointed. This is a great album to start out with, but hey, everything Estradashpere touches turns to musical gold, so you can't go wrong.
I'm just thankful these guys are still playing music, and hope they continue to do so for a long long time.

3 1/2


One of the under-valued group's most accomplished efforts, Estradasphere has taken the genre-defying palate from influences past and streamlined that into something light years away from gimmick- only in its last leg does anything become less than fabulous.

Despite not being a "concept album" like Buck Fever or Palace of Mirrors, I felt like this album had very nice flow to it. Some listeners may not enjoy the death metal block (Jungle Warfare followed by Body Slam), but I think it really flows.

First let me saddly inform you that Trey Spruance (Mr.Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3) is no where to be had in this little experiment. The plus side of this CD is that it has no video game music, the main downside though is that the Mr.Bungle influence is almost completly drained from this work (with the exception of the middle-eastern violin sound that surfaced periodically on Bungle's California). The cover art is ugly and boring (compared to Buck Fever) and it seems to uncomfortably place this work somewhere between Oysterhead/Primus (both of whom I like) and Spiro Gyra (yuck). Ultimatly, I think this album serves to seperate these guys from the Spruance/Patton/Zorn/Laswell/etc. wierdo camp, and places them instead alot closer to "jam band" territory. If you like Phish but wish they sang less and sounded more like a tounge-in-cheek Spyro Gyra (that thought makes me laugh hillariously by the way) then by all means you should rush out and spend all your beer money on this drivel immediately. However, if you are like me and starving for more "Mr.Bungle: California" territory then I reccomend this band's other release "Buck Fever" (produced by Spruance), and possibly some other Spruance work such as the group "Secret Chiefs 3" (?). I don't regret owning this, but I do regret buying this; you figure it out. It's worth about 8 dollars to me. The foldout graphics consist of a (Tales-from-the-Punchbowl-Esque)drawing of four guys in patent leather and zoro masks on a cartoon rooftop weilding jazz instruments. It should be funny, but it just isn't.