Fluxury - Lunar escape velocity - 2001
intro
I´ll be sincere: it would be very easy for me to write a kind review with three stars and that´s all. But I don´t want to deceive you... firstly my duty is to inform the readers about the things in which they´re going to spend their money; but I don´t want to deceive the musicians. If I tell you that this CD is a masterpiece I suppose they´ll go on releasing "masterpieces" like this. And this will be unjust and negative both for the readers and the band. Last but not least I don´t want to deceive myself.
review
Well, Fluxury is a band formed by... 11 musicians!. Since all the tracks are written, produced, etc... by the whole band, I think I won´t write all their names. I´ll only tell you that the line up is the usual of a progressive rock band (guitars, bass, keyboards, drums), and there are several female vocalists. If you take a look at their website you´ll see how these guys don´t skimp when they talk about their influences: Gentle Giant, Zappa, ELO, Camel, Radiohead, Magma, King Crimson, The Mamas and the Papas, etc... OK, I don´t hear these influences in their music.
"Lunar Escape Velocity" (LEV) is a 71 minutes long CD, too many minutes for a CD that is not a masterpiece, and includes 22 tracks with different length but never over 7:36 (the majority lasts from one to three minutes).
After a flat spacey intro starts "Unreality" (2:07) and... who the #@$% is the singer?. My God, I´ve never, I mean NEVER, listened to a voice as horrible as this. The music is very simple too but the music doesn´t matter because the vocals sticks in the brain. Is this the best singer among 11 musicians?. I won´t talk about every song but all the songs sung by this guy are dispensable. Curiously I noticed some good musical ideas here and there but the vocals are too much for me. The female vocals, although aren´t great, do a good job in tracks such as "Pretty perfect" (4:09) or the two parts of "Lookup" (a cappella) (0:45) and (Tutti) (5:56).
The CD is conceptual because some melodies and structures are used with variations along the whole album. If I were a benevolent guy I´d say that the listener can find some good things inside some songs, mainly the last ones, and I must also admit that Fluxury´s music is very original and unlabelled, far from influences. They try to create bizarre vocal melodies and they haven´t skill enough to perform them and they try to create bizarre instrumental developments and they haven´t skill enough to perform them. I´m not talking about musical skill but progressive skill.
conclusion
I´m not the best person to advice any band but my opinion about Fluxury would be different if they replace the vocalist and if they work hard on those moments of quality inside their music. I prefer a good 40 minutes long CD rather than a mediocre 71 minutes long CD You know what I mean, don´t you?
The CD is not bad at all if we consider this band as an amateur band. At least, they don´t try to copy. But a supposed originality is not synonym of quality.