Ovrfwrd are a four piece who play all instrumental progressive Rock so help us all. And yes, they have an aversion to vowels, so if any vowels are mssng n ths rvw it's down to them.
The record opens with the over 16 minute long titular song. This easily establishes itself as background music with some nice organ parts quite quickly as it slwly mndrs along. All I really want to hear are the organ parts rather than the soaring guitar wnkry. If it reminds me of anyone its super obscure Swedes Isildurs Bane and that band's Mind Pass series. Eventually it comes to a shimmering close and I barely noticed the transition to the nxt tne.
Brother Jack McDuff opens like they have just got Jimmy Smith in on organ. It is has a really funky Hammond edge to it without actually sounding too funky as the rest of the instrumentation lacks any real funk. It's as if the organ is the counterpoint to the drums and a guitar that has a ridiculous Malmsteen-esque fret wankery solo that destroys the funky feel set up by the organ. When said organ comes back in it only reminds me of how bad the guitar part is. If only I could have it sans the guitar I mght wnt t lstn to it again before it goes all Bo Hannson towards the end.
Dust Nova starts all slow and careful like something from Alice Coltrane's Journey to Satchidananda before the strings come in and make it sound more soft classical with gentle drumming. It's all very restrained until it builds and breaks over into doom laden wddly gtr bllcks. Finally, after eons the wddly bllcks givs way to some cool strings towards the close and of course more wddly bllcks. I thought these might bring the tune to a cose but no they still have another couple of minutes of noises and piano tinkles to kill it off with. This badly needs to be 4 minutes shorter.
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Utopia Planitia is next. Yes a utopia in which it sounds like the pan pipes have been broken out in the first 5 seconds, really and that's utopia? Damn. Then it's all dense musical spasms like the intense splurges of Out Bloodyrageous-era Soft Machine but somehow disconnected from the rest of the tune as is wends its way through some dark forest of despair. It goes on for over 8 minutes rather than 2 minutes, which would be preferable, but they have clearly listened to a few too many Pink Floyd albums late at night. This gets more turgid the longer it goes on and they think they are shimmering but in reality are flshng t wy dwn th tlt while trying to impress David Toop.
At last, the final track Creature Comfort comes on and has a mellow beginning with a repeating motif which is pretty good if only the drums sounded like they were playing the same tune but they don't. The strings are cool but the drums seem to be intrusive and almost wrongly placed in the mix and dmn 'm gld whn t's fnshd.
Find out more at ovrfwrd@gmail.com if Prgrssve Bllcks is your Thang!
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