If you've heard any of
Copernicus
' prior five albums, you won't be surprised by the general tenor of this, his sixth one. Basically, it sounds as if a cosmic philosopher has decided he'll have a greater chance at getting his message across to the masses if he teams up with a
lounge
band. By the same token, it sounds as if the
band has seized upon
as its long-awaited chance to get far-out and cosmic. It's an odd mesh, to say the least, with
delivering, in a spoken (not singing) voice, prose espousing the wonder of humanity, the quest for truth, the microscopic importance of man in the context of the universe, and the danger to Earth's survival caused by man's folly. If that sounds like it might be a
new age
album, it isn't (although the band goes into some
flourishes from time to time), as
moans, growls, and melodramatizes his lyrics like a wizened,
Methuselan
Shakespearean
actor. To those familiar with other
albums, this differs from the others in that (save for one track) he traveled to Ecuador to work with musicians who do not even speak English. The accompaniment was devised based on the emotional tone of his performance rather than the meaning of his lyrics. The band chugs away like an average
fusion
group flying by the seat of their pants to match
' mercurial moods, occasionally uncoiling some nearly
avant-garde
bursts of fury, particularly on guitar. The songs are mostly ruminative, if somewhat anguished at points, the exception being
"The Stick,"
which has an almost
hardcore
-like
post-punk
bash behind the leader's castigations of mankind's ignorance. ~ Richie Unterberger