Parallel Or 90 Degrees - Unbranded - Music From The E.E.C. Surplus

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Artist:	Parallel Or 90 Degrees
Title:	Unbranded - Music From The E.E.C. Surplus
Label:	Cyclops CYCL 092
Length(s):	73 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2000
Month of review:	08/2000

Line up

Sam Baine - keyboards
Andy Tillison - vocals, keyboards
Alex King - bass
Ken Senior - drums
Gareth Harwood - guitars
(the instrumentation is tentative)

Tracks

1)	Gods Of Convenience	9.10
2)	Migraine	8.19
3)	Unbranded	8.36
4)	Shoulder To Shoulder	11.26
5)	Space Junk	10.38
6)	An Autopsy In Artificial Light	25.04

Summary

The new PO90 album with as a bonustrack the sequel to Afterlifecycle. Since the previous album there have been plenty of line-up changes with the rhythm section leaving.

The music

The album opens with melodic, friendly piano developing the theme for the song. Then some cosmic keyboards set in, accompanying the piano and the music builds up an expectancy. The theme is repeated with lush keyboards and then finally the guitar sets in and the track moves into gear. Tillison soon starts to sing about the Gods Of Convenience, a song about religion. The shouted chorus reminds me a bit of Everon strangely enough. Then its time for a quiet interlude with modern rhythms. The song then turns for the optimistic in a way, but featuring also some tense staccato guitar playing and meandering solo keyboards. After another vocal part similar to an earlier one the music becomes subdued again with some voices sampled and such leaving a kind of spacey mood until the end. Quite a lengthy track as in fact are all the tracks on this album, well composed, energetic (as I have come to expect from PO90) and quite high on atmosphere as well. The first track moves right into the darker Migraine with its modern rhythms. Whispered vocals precede the slightly vocoded vocals of this track. The bass plays a prominent part here. As is often the case there's an alternation between the subdued and the heavy, coming in waves. Sometimes the music on this track moves into the direction of bands such as Prodigy, but never that heavy or aggressive. The song seems more keyboard dominated with a jazzy solo and an Emerson influenced one. At the end the bass plays repetitively until a sharp guitar supposedly gives everybody a headache. The title track then. This is better than the previous one. The melody suits me more and the typical alternation between subdued and heavy works well. The music is rather riff dominated and has those washes of Hammond organ that is so dominating during their live concerts with some orchestral/bombastic additions on keyboards and, mainly, guitar. With the next one we pass the eleven minute mark: Should To Shoulder opens reflectively with flute. This song builds up very slowly, melodically and apeallingly. The music works up to mid-tempo with rhythm guitar and hence up to the first vocal climax, which is the title of the track. Then the music backs down a little and the flute comes back in giving way to a dark and rhythmic passage with bleepy keys. Then the vocals return in force, and the influences of Hammill shine through, they are never that far off, although PO90 takes those influences to make something new out of it as well. They are not copy-cats. In my opinion the best track up to now, although the ambient ending takes a bit long maybe. Here Floyd is a point of reference (minus the flute then, which sounds a bit too happy for Floyd). Even some mellotron in there. Space Junk is the last of the album tracks, because I believe that the final track should be considered a kind of bonus track. Space Junk opens with heavy percussion and involved keyboards all up-tempo. All in all this is one of the heavier tracks with an aggressive chorus and driven playing in between. Also in this track I hear some echoes the Prodigy, showing that PO90 is not sticking to the past, but combines its influences from various places just as Porcupine Tree tends to do.

An Autopsy In Artificial Light is the twentyfive minute bonus track which is the sequel to Afterlifecycle from two the second album. It opens atmospherically with Simmer, the first part. Then the speed gradually builds up to something akin to ELP building up to a keyboards part that will a memorable part of this track. Piano and rather subdued low vocals form the basis of the second part of the track. After a long involved instrumental passage the music winds down to something akin to film music. Melodic and also quite sad. Then the bands set in again, but keeping it quite melodic working up to a triumphant passage and from then on some of the passage are repeated until the end. A very good epic track in the style of Afterlifecycle.

Conclusion

Another good album from the band. I have my preferences liking Migraine the least of the tracks and liking Should To Shoulder and An Autopsy the most. The others are somewhere in between. The music is as we have come to expect from this band: from subtle to aggressive and incorporating influences of ELP, Van Der Graaf Generator and some Pink Floyd, but also newer bands outside our sphere of progressive such as Prodigy, including modern rhythms and keyboards. Compared to the previous album, I think the songs are generally less concise, but for the rest I'm hard put to give any real differences (maybe the rhythm section then).