Albatrosh — Night Owl
The distinguishing feature of most of Albatrosh's music is extended sections of close unison between the two players, dancing with perfect synchronization through lengthy non-linear progressions of notes with many meter changes and illogical assymmetries. This can only be accomplished through rigorous disciplined practice, and the music feels quite academic and theory based, to the point of being overly detached and rigid. The musicians play at a consistent mezzo-forte volume, and it seems their energy is fully consumed with performing the music accurately, with inadequate thought put into the actual meanings of the notes, or the vision behind the work. Though this is 'experimental' music by some definition, it certainly has no edge or emotional intensity.
The pianist, Eyolf Dale, in particular, I would guess spends copious hours practicing the kind of time signature and syncopation exercises which are intentionally written to be nonsensical and musically worthless, so as to sharpen the player's memorization skill to the point where even totally nonsensical patterns are possible to retain. His style is note-heavy, and filled with as many rhythmic and scalar permutations as humanly possible. They cycle through so many chords and scales that I feel the possibilities of each are almost wholly unexplored.
Perhaps it is my own failing, as I tend towards music with aesthetic value rather than technical cleverness or speed, but I have difficulty finding any emotion or meaning in these kind of calculated feeling mathematical variations. Unless you're a virtuoso yourself, you're going to have a hard time counting along to this music, too, so there's no groove to speak of.
The moments on the album where the band does take a breath long enough to play a melody or thin the overall density are, unsurprisingly, the best. These moments tend to sound closer to traditional jazz ballads, with sweetly lilting romantic themes. "Duvet Day", the album's opener, is such a song, my favorite piece on the album. Here, the saxophonist, André Roligheten, reveals a pleasant vibrato. If only more of the recording had been on this sort of sound, rather than banging out irregular volleys of triplets with added and subtracted beats.
If this sort of emotionally detached virtuosic cleverness is your bag, and your favorite bands are Liquid Tension Experiment, Planet X, et al, I can't say this band does badly at it. Personally, I've always felt there was a vital soul component missing from that sort of thing, an audible hesitance on the part of the musicians that indicates that passion and raw expression has been hindered. Bands like Steve Smith's Vital Information are exceptions to this, presenting the complexity of their ideas within a concise musical framework, allowing aesthetics to drive their direction. In the metal realm, Meshuggah is another great example, using polyrhythms as tools to illustrate their apocalyptic psychedelic visions. I would recommend this band similarly attempt to focus on the content and meaning of their sound, and draw their focus away from precision and complexity for its own sake.