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The Red Masque — Victoria and the Haruspex
(Big Balloon Music no#, 2002, CD)

by Jim Chokey, Published 2003-02-01

Victoria and the Haruspex Cover art

Philadelphia’s The Red Masque, whose debut EP was reviewed in Exposé #23, is moving in some unusual new directions. The 25-minute opening track of Victoria and the Haruspex, for instance, is a strange and amelodic sonic pastiche that brings together free jazz, mid-70s Crimson improvisations, and the trippier side of German space rock. The band showed a bit of interest in this kind of free sound creation on its debut EP, but there was nothing there to compare to this extended conglomeration of noise-scapes, intense bass / guitar jams, wordless vocalizations, and strange and unidentifiable noises. The piece never seems wholly stable — as soon as a tangible melody or rhythm seems to be taking hold, it seems to dissolve itself into its bare components which are then mixed up with new, random noises that are constantly being introduced. Yet, strangely, it all seems to hold together, flowing from one moment to the next almost effortlessly. Of the remaining three tracks, “Birdbrain” is the most conventionally proggish, with the same Van der Graaf Generator-meets-Tale Cue feel of the their demo EP. The last two tracks, however, change things radically: the nine-minute “Afterloss” features Lynette Shelley’s powerful (yet slightly off-key) vocals backed by acoustic strings (guitar, harp, mandolin, etc.), while “Cenotaph” is a solo harp piece. These two change the mood of the disk, bringing it to a soft, melodic and acoustic denouement that seems worlds away from the opening track. A very intriguing, if somewhat schizophrenic, release.

Filed under: New releases, Issue 26, 2002 releases

Related artist(s): The Red Masque

More info
http://theredmasque.bandcamp.com/album/victoria-and-the-haruspex

 

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