PSYCHE MUSIC:

I have complained before, how more often, especially in the 90s, symphonic progressions in rock music fail in vision or intelligent manoeuvres, but more and more I notice releases where symhonically arranged progressive music succeeds to create a next step, make it sound modern, more contemporary for there are so many examples of good music and developments groups should not be blinded by melodic progressions alone.
Nodo Gordiano’s music still is easy to follow. Because of having read books on Stockhausen I cannot help it now but to analyse and measure music in a couple of standards even more than before, and that’s how I notice how this group also uses a sort of rhythmical evolution which you can compare with how language evolves, something like pm-bdmpm-pm-pm, it could even have been written down this way instead of with notes (melody & rhythm) (Stockhausen himself says he writes about rhythms and melodies beyond the perception of the body movements and spoken language, which I think is an interesting idea ; he says this way the perception goes beyond the limits of someone’s own body and incorporates movements and patterns in different spaces)-.
The band Nodo Gordiano has an attractive intelligent way of interacting, making its layers slightly independent but still interactive, where most often a faster bass drives certain melodies, the rhythms either follow in the background or make precise leading indications for the evolutions, the electric guitars and keyboards add different movements of improvisation, and here and there we hear some flute or even sax. And just a few contemporary choir passages (the introduction) are included too, or soprano voice.
On “Ozymandias part II” a whole range of percussive possibilities is expressed with complex solos. Each track seems to be divided in nicely different, but also rather open sections, so that even in the 30 minute track this creates a feeling this remains open and natural, it did not saturate at any moment but also that it creates no real ending.

Gerald Van Waes