Far Corner — Endangered

Rock is serious business. Well, not really, but by getting it out the sweaty clubs or screaming stadiums this so-called 'chamber rock' has acquired the more serious air of classical and contemporary composed music. Yet, while listening to Endangered you'll find a serious amount of fun as well.

The band displays a playfulness that makes Endangered enjoyable to listen to. At the same time there's plenty of darker passages to be found in various parts of the album, like the mysterious start of opening track Inhuman. In Claws the dungeon in which a melodica over the improvisation of reverberating with scary clashes and rasps, creating some strange kind of out-of-place dub. The little improv there is, as this music sounds very much composed and concisely structured. Much of the music consists of interesting architectures of irregular rhythms and, as you might have gathered already, changes of moods. You'll find the ghost of Bartók in the (Hammond)organ- and pianodriven tunes like Do You Think I'm Spooky? but also the a tip of the hat to Mozart in Claws. The titletrack, almost 20 minutes in length, breathes a little more freedom than the rest of the tracks. A closer look at the writing credits confirms this by proving to be a bandeffort, while the other pieces are written by keyboardist Dan Maske. The extended violinsolo in Not From Around Here (by guest Jerry Loughly) takes it into a more free territory, as well as into the light.

With influences like Bartók and Stravinsky, jazz and rock, you're bound to be likened to King Crimson and Frank Zappa. People into those artists are very likely to enjoy this album a lot, but there's much more to Far Corner. Recording, composition and execution all very well done, although it somehow seems to be asking for some real disorder, there seems to be no 'serious' danger. So as a minor point of critique you could say that it's maybe a bit lighter than it could (or should?) be, to get the listener out of his lazy chair.