| Artist: | Trap |
| Title: | Beyond The Status Quo |
| Label: | Gazul GA 8600.AR |
| Length(s): | 60 minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 1997 |
| Month of review: | 05/1997 |
| 1) | Storm Over Coyote Canyon | 4.28 |
| 2) | Sigma Phi Zero | 3.58 |
| 3) | Crimson Moon | 3.54 |
| 4) | Lost In Morroco | 4.23 |
| 5) | Double-barrel At 184 | 2.47 |
| 6) | Consecutive Rhymes 1 Thru 8 | 9.47 |
| 7) | Sebastopol | 4.39 |
| 8) | Blue October | 5.36 |
| 9) | Day At The Park | 4.15 |
| 10) | Romanian Circus | 3.13 |
| 11) | Traps | 3.55 |
| 12) | Zappazone | 9.05 |
| Mystery Track (tribute To Henry Cow) |
The next track features accordion and also contains some strangely played or even distorted ukelele. So if the presence of the ukelele was putting you of, don't worry it's put to good use. In fact this isn't that much of a composition or song, more like a agglomerate of sounds if you ask me, with lots of percussion, which isn't strange if you know that Parra is in fact a percussionist who plays a number of other instruments. Very unstructured.
Crimson Moon epigonizes as one might expect King Crimson with a start that sounds very much like In the Court of the Crimson King, but with less dominance of the synths(mellotron) and acoustic guitar on the fore. After this intro, the music becomes more avant-garde, while in the end the Crimson theme returns, played by a highly emotive violin. Well done.
Lost in Morroco has, and this should have been expected, an Arabian feel to it. The song is based on a slow synth melody, quickly played acoustic guitar and varied percussion. The song sounds a little psychedelic.
According to the liner notes the next track, Double-barrel at 184 features double bass drums at 184 bpm (well that should give an impression). For the rest there's an electric guitar that solo's over the drums and some noises and tapes are also involved.
To compensate, Consecutive rhymes 1 thru 8 is a quiet piece but very varied as each part has two soloists and so the instrumentation varies a lot. There's some of everything here and the endresult is rather disjointed, because the breaks from one into the other part are rather abrupt. For the rest this is experimental with a strong (free)jazz(rock) feel to it with toynoises, sop saxes and the works.
Sebastopol is quite a heavy track with lots of guitar and strange wailing keyboards and is in the Cantebury style, having that jazzy feel to it. A powerful track.
Blue October Haze is for Pfs, and I guess, in view of the music, they mean herewith the Cuneiform band. A chaotic track, a little psychedelic maybe, with an important role for the sax.
Another cup of tea entirely is Day in the Park (with Sarah Jessica), which features mandolin and accordion and is a joyful track almost, a bit sunny, with all kinds of weird happy sounds.
Then there's also Romanian Circus that sounds vaguely Arabian like Lost in Morocco and Traps which is a drum solo with a melody (according to the booklet and I saw no reason to say otherwise).
The closer Zappazone doesn't really remind me a lot of Zappa, although it does feature a lot of electric guitar. I better admit it: I do have quite a lot of Zappa, but can't say I know it all by heart (or any other body part). Sounds like an improvisation to me, with lots of (possibly unconnected) things going on.
The mystery track is dedicated to Henry Cow and sounds like a chaotic rendition of You Really Got Me Now, originally by The Kinks. A nice touch.