Electronimo - "Remora Eight"

Album review by Danny Alexander

We have a regular prog revival underway in the Kansas City area's underground, and Electronimo stands up with the best of it. Like the extremes of free jazz, this music seems bent on challenging the way we hear music, molding vivid soundscapes out of as much noise as it seems possible to explode out of one disc. I'm not sure any of this music actually succeeds in that lofty mission, but this is one valiant effort. Rather than opting for the spacey textures of Nasa's Little Secret or the guitar conflict of Grovel, Electronimo relies on grooves built out of aggressive guitar chords, extreme dynamics in volume and drums that splash off of every sound being made when they aren't manically cranking up the rhythm.

This 10 song album builds relentlessly six songs in, before freefalling and building again. Mike Wentworth's weary, tormented voice gives some taste of horror to the space odyssey "Capsule," while it welcomes the "Heroin" comparisons that seem inevitable with the boom and bust dynamics of "Season." The most welcome surprise is the way the final cut, "Triple Witching Hour," acts as the mirror image of Hendrix's "1983 . . . (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)," seeking refuge in past fantasies rather than one of the future and finding a similar haunted beauty there. My house is still echoing with the subsonic feedback that endlessly closes that little tour-de-force.

--Danny Alexander