Spillover released by M.E.N. has to be one of the strangest albums I've ever heard. As an audiophile I have read a number of terms in the supplied info that you don't often come across and I have to be honest that after repeatedly listening to this album on level 10 I am really overwhelmed by the quality of the recordings, or rather the very special mix and mastering. We are promised a total immersion in sound through holophony and 8D audio and as mentioned above, it is something special. But it's all about the music, right? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Who are we talking about? Well, M.E.N. are: Marco Grieco / Vincenzo "Enzo" Lardo / Nicola "Nick" Cruciani, so Italians. The only name that rings a bell is Marco Grieco but I couldn't find any information about who exactly plays what, but to be honest, that doesn't really matter. Spillover will take you on a musical mystery tour. The album is full of sound effects and fragments of all kinds of sounds and quite a lot of spoken texts. Music too? Yes, certainly that too and occasionally even very nice music, but also regularly very strange music that more than once has a somewhat classical feel. If you can't do much with this description then I have to disappoint you because it only gets crazier. In the thirteen songs you are tossed back and forth between all kinds of styles. From lullabies like Keeping Safe to short electronic soundscapes like Mother Earth. The vocals are often quite reasonable with an audible accent but that doesn't really bother. A title like Hell makes you expect something special and we get a hard electronic rhythm with a kind of spoken vocals and this reminds me very strongly of Swiss band Yello, except for the dissonant guitar. In this track we also get a cacophony of sounds in the middle and then return to the tight rhythm. In many of the songs we hear distorted vocals and Human Eclipse contains not only this but some fairly melodic guitar licks and even spicy drumming too, because occasionally it also rocks like crazy. The solos on keys and guitar are nice and quirky and show that these men can play excellently. Every now and then the name of Steven Wilson comes up, but more because of the sonic experimentation drive than purely the music. Present Days starts with a spoken text about the youth of one of the band members and reminds me of Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, but not quite of the same level. The vocals occasionally go over the edge here but then suddenly there is a nice dragging guitar solo. Let's say that it is characteristic of these Italians to put you on the wrong foot and that this certainly is their intention. Mouths starts with the sound of an old video game and is also full of electronics and sound fragments, but then again it also contains a very nice keyboard solo followed by one on guitar. You know what, I'm not going to describe any more songs, I'm going to advise you to listen to the album but with the warning that you shouldn't expect a standard prog album. As a fairly narrowminded listener, I have to admit that I am not completely convinced musically, but I did enjoy the trip when listening to Spillover a couple of times. So, it remains for me to add a rating and that is so difficult in this case. Every now and then it goes so far over the edge that I drop out, but just when I want to skip a song, a beautiful piece of music passes by and this feeling is difficult to translate into a number of stars. Would I listen to the album again, I don't think so but that doesn't make it a bad album and because of the super weird but exciting recording I'll take the minus off. *** Erik Fraanje (edited by Dave Smith) Where to buy? |
