TORQUEM — Ansiktet (review)

TORQUEM — Ansiktet album cover Album · 2013 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
snobb
This French trio's debut, with a Swedish name ("Ansiktet" means "The Face" in Swedish) and obviously non-French songs titles, is quite a pleasant surprise. Torquem calls their music "rock-jazz", but you won't find any traces of what could be called influenced by Mahavishnu Orchestra. Instead, we find aerial, strictly framed compositions that are obviously rooted in today's math rock sound.

Post-rock (and its American variation - math rock) came as a silent explosion a few decades ago, and it looked like rock music would never be the same again. But a few years later; bloodless, lifeless and idealess post rock bands sound more like an anachronism. Looking from today, it's easy to say that post rock didn't realize its potential and just killed itself, but the genre's influence can still be heard here and there, and sometimes the results are really nice.

Torquem performs a great job on their debut album mixing dreamy aerial static post rock sounds into energetic, angular math rock framed compositions, and then filling the internal space with jazzy improvisations. Add a few dark Magma-zeuhl touches (as any French jazz-rock band, Torquem know their roots well), some politically-coloured speaking voices (on Hemligheter), plus female folklore chorals (on Flimreh) and you get it - a vibrant and non-boring modern chamber post jazz-rock album (probably more EP - less than 30 minutes of music).
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