When's The Future - "Same Time Tomorrow"
From the remarkably consistent Stone Premonitions label, comes the second CD from the When crew, here a 14 track, seventy minute offering with tracks ranging from one to nearly eleven minutes long. First thing to say is that it's entirely instrumental - not a song in sight. That alone sets it apart from the first one. That said, it's decidedly psychedelic, but in a totally unique way. Musically, it's so unlike anything that you've really encountered before. Don't get me wrong - this has rhythms - tons of the things - and more drums and percussion than you can shake a shaker at, while the main body of instrumentation comes from electric bass, keys and synths and electric guitars, plus a variety of samples at odd points along the journey. In some ways, it comes across as a more psychedelic answer to the seventies version of the Krautrock band Embryo only without any jazz flavourings. Oddly enough the one thing you do notice about this music, is the absence of what you'd call any considerable lead work - you won't find searing guitar licks or wailing synth solos here - instead it's very much a collective, almost tribal in many ways - and its uniqueness is what makes it sound so refreshing and work just superbly. To give a track by track breakdown would take forever, but there are no fillers and what you do hear will have you transfixed as no one track sounds much like another and yet there is a flow to the album that carries you with it. The bass and drums take an upfront stand in the mix as much as anything else, and this is a rhythmic ride of statuesque proportions. With flavours along the way of nineties ambience, Middle Eastern rhythmic structures, tribal grooves plus layer on layer of addictive, driving, mostly percussive, rhythms, this is one of those easily accessible yet amazingly different albums that, once you play it and get inside its heady delights, you'll be playing it for a long, long time to come.
by Andy Gee - Dead Earnest Records