| Escapade Rule #3 |
New York instrumental outfit Escapade calls their music "Avant Psych-Rock." I don't see the "Avant." There is very little on this CD which you couldn't find on a 1970s release by King Crimson, or a late 60s release by Pink Floyd. This isn't a bad thing at all. We have far too many instrumental outfits who take their cues from the Grateful Dead, giving us meandering patchouli-soaked solos with all of Jerry Garcia's self-indulgence and little of his melodic or technical skill. Escapade's sound has different influences -- Fripp, Barrett-era Floyd, Krautrock and modern jazz. The end result is tighter, more cohesive and far more satisfying. Just because Carlos Santana, Miles Davis and John Coltrane were capable of mind-blowing 20-minute solos doesn't mean that everyone should try this at home. Far too many long jams turn into "my instrument is my penis and I must expose it to the crowd" wank sessions. Thankfully, Escapade avoids these pitfalls. A good part of the credit for this lies with leader Hadley Kahn, whose propulsive drumming keeps things from falling into the Slough of Should-Have-Been-an-Air-Guitar-Solo. The 19-minute "Symphony of Sirens," and 12+ minutes of "Circumference" and "And Then All Silence Was Crushed" remain interesting, using their length to explore various permutations on a groove rather than in grinding said groove into the ground. "Mysterious Utterances" features Hadley Kahn's Wright-esque synthesizer loops playing off Paul Casanova's Barrett-flavored guitar. The music moves slow and cold as a glacier, with occasional spikes of dissonance piercing the calm. They also show their debt to Pink Floyd with a cover of "Interstellar Overdrive," a free-form jam on a free-form jam with a two-pronged wah-wah powered attack guitar attack from Casanova and Paul Hilzinger and a driving drumbeat from Kahn. Escapade's sound evokes the sprawl of psychedelic rock, combined with the discipline of jazz. The harmonic structures underpinning each song may be complex, but they are far from free form anything-goes chaos. Drummer Hadley Kahn is the frontman and founder of Escapade, but frequently steps aside and lets the other members have the spotlight. On "Eclipse in Carbon" he turns the stage over to John Ortega (processed piccolo bass) and dual guitars from Russell and Bob Giffen. "Eclipse" begins slowly, with a dark ambient feel and keeps promising to build into a monster groove ala "Frankenstein." While the tension keeps growing, the great jam never quite arrives before the track dissolves into the eerie marimba opening of "And Then All Silence Was Crushed." At first I was disappointed; on a second listen, I realized that this lack of resolution made the track even more powerful and unsettling. So what will the loyal readers of *Starvox* think of
Escapade? It depends: Escapade is most definitely Not Goth. On the
other hand, they're also Not Phish, and you can listen to them without
reaching for the bong or the hacky-sack. If you enjoy listening
to highly skilled musicians working together, you will definitely like
"Rule #3." Those who remember listening to their older
brother's prog-rock LPs (or those of us who *were* the older brother who
owned prog-rock LPs... ) will also take great pleasure in these powerhouse
riffs and excursions into inner space. Until I heard this CD, I
would have sworn that they don't make 'em like this anymore. 1) A Symphony of Sirens Escapade Homepage |