Statue

Artist: 
Album Title: 
Statue
Release Date: 
Friday, March 8, 2013
Label: 
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

In a very short time (foundation was in January of 2010) after coming out of the rehearsal room, this Limburg (Belgian province in the Dutch part of the country) based instrumental band made an impression at a couple of band competitions [won 2011's Maanrockrally and Theater Aan Zee (the latter got the band 7500 euros of production budget), and were finalists at that same year's Limbomania]. Not that surprising really, considering we're dealing with a septet which includes no less than 5 guitarists!

From the info sheet comes the following text (probably taken from a review of one of the band's shows) : “Five electric guitars, bass and drums, purely instrumental, screaming loud and amazingly beautiful. With lots of references to Symphonic Rock, to Noise, to simple Rock, but also to repetive music, an occasional Ry Cooder-like slide and a twitch of TC Matic. Pwer, a real wall of sound within which each musician does his/her thing in a tight and disciplined manner. Interaction at high level, mutual dialogue, exploding noise of fade-out quieting, with at the end the buzzing guitars left behind as the musicians leave the scene. Simply impressive!”

With influences including Pink Floyd, Queens Of The Stone Age, Glenn Branca, Robert Fripp (King Crimson, you know!), Sonic Youth and Brian Eno the band (consisting of guitarists Lennart Janssen, Joos Houwen, Maxim Helings, Emiel Van den Abbeele and Chloë Maes – the latter a rather good-looking young woman, bassist Bart Weyens and drummer Antoni Foscez) indeed finds itself going from melodic parts with occasional repetition to more Noisy passages, and to Ambient fade-outs. To the ears of the more experienced music lover the end result is certainly a delight beyond compare, as elements of all the above mentioned influences come passing y one by one, depending on the track. And with a track length varying from almost 5 to a near 12 minutes, there's still enough tempo and melody changes to keep the listener stuck to his/her seat during listening sessions! Although there's 5 guitars present, there's never really a chaotic part in the whole. There's also never a moment where you hear more than 3 different melodies in the guitarists' part of the music...at least not that I was able to discern! Yeah, these musicians are certainly well tuned into each other!

I daresay, it is regrettable that there isn't more material of this band available on the Internet. You can listen to the album's song “A New Sun” at either the band's facebook or YouTube page (links at the band's own (www.) statuemusic.com, where you can also find a gig calendar). Try finding the album's page at one of the trusted online sales sites (Amazon, iTunes, etc...) for possible 30-second samples of the album's 5 other tracks, eh? Hum...another addition to the band's accomplishments : getting into my “Best Albums Of 2013”-lists!

98/100