Bill Brovold and Larval — Surviving Death/Alive Why?

In the process of making Surviving Death bandleader Bill Brovold suffered no less than five heartattacks in one year. Way too young and healthy but coming dangerously close to an untimely end of his life Brovold amazingly survived and managed to finish Surviving Death. Thinking up a title of an instrumental album doesn't seem all that difficult anymore.

Larval has taken many forms, usually bigger than the average rockband. People familiar with the output of recordlabel Cuneiform may know what that means, but only to an extent. While most 'chamber rock' bands are eager to use all kinds of complex structures, Brovold's complexity is less obvious. He aims more for hypnotic powers, sometimes building into walls of sound that make you worry about his heart. There's plenty of more orchestral and quiet parts too. Those moments a band like Tortoise comes to mind, who take minimal music and inject it with of jazz and rock. Larval more or less uses the same elements but adds a lot power to it, but never to fall into random noise. The music is very much composed with only occasionally room for (free) improvisation.

With multiple guitarists, percussionists, reedinstruments, violin and piano playing together in various combinations you can imagine the wealthy soundworld in which Brovold works. The sections that are loud are never suffocatingly dense, but with plenty of power, which is quite accomplishment. On the other hand there's many moments that are more subtle and the album becomes a rich and adventurous collection of atmospheres and emotions.

As a bonus there's a second disc in this set called Alive Why?. Here you can find a collection of liverecordings from various band lineups between 1999 and 2006. As you can expect the music here is a bit rawer than on the first.

Larval's fifth album should find its way to followers of the label easily, but people fearing overt, farfetched complexity should give this a chance. This may not be standard chorus-verse-fare, it often aims for the groin but with enough sense of adventure to keep the brain entertained.