Instrumental Quarter
Traffic Jam
[ Sickroom Records ] 2006

Wordless music. Ninety-seven percent of the time I'd rather feast on my own burnt toenails than listen to most of the instrumental music being made post-What Burns Don Caballero. Instrumental Quarter fit quite kindly in that 3% that can do the genre justice - extremely and exquisitely well.

This quartet [based in Italy - founded by guitarist / songwriter Paride Lanciani (see also: Kash)] has sent to us, the needy, and album primed and refined in the timeless [yet difficult to craft proper] art of instrumental compositions. The albums title Traffic Jam could not be more fitting, as each of the thirteen pieces contained could make such an obstructed event seem quite poetic [in its own mystical, Dada movement anti-way]. Swirling movements of core tools [drums, guitars and bass] find their prized way through passages with Davide Arnecedo's addition of theremin, rhodes and violin [see/hear: "The New Year" (video included)]. "Another War" files in with crafted timing and patterned blips - my mind envisions generous advancements in technology where the elder trees are manufacturing voiceless humans whose sole responsibility will be to water the gentle giants on a daily basis and dry their leaves.

Truly an album capable of transporting the average head space over/above/beyond the meandering mess that life feeds us daily - Traffic Jam is a stimulating break from all that weighs you down. Seek this and breathe - again. Mahavishnu Orchestra [Lost Trident Sessions, to be exact] for our deprived generation, if I can say so... and I will.

:k :: ( exhale )