Blueprint Human Being - "Heaven Is All"
(self-released CDEP)
Blueprint Human Being - "Heaven Is All"
(self-released CDEP)
Uploaded to Aural Innovations: June 2004
Blueprint Human Being’s debut CD is probably about as difficult to pin down as anything you’ll hear these days. Throughout the first four songs that make up Heaven Is All one can clearly hear the influence of King Crimson (particularly the incendiary baroque jamming of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic and Starless and Bible Black), Magma (the oppressive, often mantra-like rhythms of Udu Wudu), Universe Zero and Art Zoyd (the incessant use of compound time signatures and dissonant melodicism), and perhaps even elements of European jazz-fusion. The playing is uniformly excellent, as are the arrangements, and though the pretentious conceptual apparatus the group apparently adheres to and announces in the liner notes definitely smacks of RIO-derived ideological propagandizing, there is an undeniable archetypal heaviness to the sound Blueprint Human Being has conceived and sculpted on Heaven Is All. The opening track, “Vojaganto,” features a distinctive Frippian guitar attack flanked by wailing, angry saxophone, a lethal bass groove worthy of Jannick Top or John Wetton, and frenzied though precise drumming. “Vojaganto” could’ve easily been a lost track from Univers Zero’s Heatwave or the aforementioned Larks’ Tongues, and the constant tempo shifts, particularly from 4/4 to 10/8, are impressive indeed. “Hotelli Kognito” roils with the strangely melodic serialism of early Art Zoyd. Here, Lea Linnero’s shrieking violin cuts through the dense, futuristic chamber rock like the howl of a banshee through a London fog. Rock-in-Opposition fanatics will certainly enjoy Heaven Is All, as it clearly takes up where ensembles such as Art Bears, Univers Zero and Magma left off, sadly, years ago.
For more information you can visit the Blueprint Human Being web site at: http://BHBeing.cjb.net.
Email at: xsamiharju@kolumbus.fi or erno.taipale@suomi24.fi.
Contact via snail mail c/o Sami Harju; Raitatie 13; 36200 Kangasala; Finland.
Reviewed by Charles Van de Kree