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Beat Love Oracle — Dangerous Liquids
(Bandcamp áMARXE 0723, 2023, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2023-12-24

Dangerous Liquids Cover art

Just like Hardscore before them (composer, marimba and synthesist Frank Nuyts and sax player and synthesist Frank DeBruyne’s previous group), Beat Love Oracle is a box of wild surprises amazing the listener at every turn, and this, their third album in four years is probably their best effort to date. One might call their music jazz, and in fact that would be fairly close to correct, though what informs these compositions and improvisations beyond the jazz idiom is what makes what they do so unique. For example the closing track on the CD version “Two whales crashing a beach party for 2 electric basses” is at once curious and dreamy, full of interesting electronics, and really quite beyond jazz. Of course the group’s regular bassist Stijn Deldaele is featured prominently along with guest bassist Joshua Dellaert, with the electronics courtesy of another guest player Jeff Nuyttens. On most of the eight track (or six if one buys it on vinyl) the core quartet which includes Nuyts, Debruyne, Deldaele and drummer / percussionist Ronald Dhaene pull it off with a sound that follows jazz much more closely, probably due to the prominence of the mallets and saxes, though it’s still hardly like anything one has heard before, with outbirsts of spoken word, odd sounds and vocalizations, though the grooves these guys turn up in are positively spectacular, sometimes jumping around between odd rhythms and irregular changes. The complexity of the compositions and arrangements on a track like “Shaky Balance (on a solid ground)” could only be Zappa inspired, though others like “Barefoot on Thin Ice” wander through more gentle territories, with beautiful melodies guiding the listener along its path. The oddly titled “Sticky Stomp (all the crack of dawn)” and the opening title track are delightful romps through the concept machine, the former sounding almost like an improvisation in parts, while the latter is based on a burning groove set up on drums, bass and saxes, then punctuated nicely by the marimba. Dangerous Liquids certainly  has all the ingredients to make it a wild and unique adventure through some vaguely unfamiliar musical landscapes.

Filed under: New releases, 2023 releases

Related artist(s): Beat Love Oracle

More info
http://amarxe.bandcamp.com/album/dangerous-liquids

 

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