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Intronaut: Habitual levitations (instilling words with tones)
26/05/14 || The Duff
Intronaut very humorously back in 2010 stated their then new album “Valley of Smoke” to be the best thing ever in the history of music. Where “Prehistoricisms” showed a unique band with a lot of promise, with the follow-up they had mastered their production values, truly found their own niche and written a masterpiece of jazz, off-kilter and heavy riffery/post-rock dreamscape; here we are three years on and “Habitual Levitations”, although not at first evidently different from its immediate predecessor, is just as good if not better.
Where “Valley of Smoke” was a spacious affair, here we have the compositions reined in, the music left less room to breathe and the arrangements yet even more comfortable; these guys are prodigies and clearly just having a blast with it. Not all tracks are polyrhythmic Mastodon meets lounge, though, some of the later tracks certainly have more of a free and easy feel as on their past album, “Harmonicon” for example is almost a freeform jam, and the band certainly develops into a more playful, widespread form from that point on.
The growls are gone, at best we get a mid-way Mastodon grumble but otherwise Sacha Dunable sings, soars, and otherwise tries his best not to alienate all of Intronaut’s jazz fans. I myself miss the gurgles but a band of this caliber, bringing music hopefully this little bit metal into the mainstream it was a wise decision on their part – musically Intronaut are too creative and cover such a wide variety of styles that to have them ignored on something as trivial as singing would be a damn shame.
This has also come at the expense of their heavier roots, “Habitual Levitations” siding more with their Mastodon groove, Isis-highs and then the bass-meandering, jazz-experimentation that makes this the lounge-post-rock band if ever there was one. What I do like though is the tightness of the heavier riffs, where on “Valley of Smoke” they appeared broader, here we have more of the ferocious style as hinted on “Sunderance” off the last record, something with a bit more meat on ‘em, and then with a track like “Steps” taking it a notch higher with a clear Meshuggah, slow and bruising beat.
In short, both records are complementary, you can’t admire one and not the other despite some bias for whatever reason; I don’t know where else Intronaut can take it, they seem to have hit their stride but undoubtedly the quality of the music will speak for itself even if they do find themselves in a creative rut; the guys are merely comfortable musicians writing heartfelt, musically savvy, chill and interesting music, and thus likely to be darlings of those like-minded regardless of what they do; so far, a bit too relax for the “Isis-throne”, but so much more in many regards and ideal for sunny days.
- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Century Media
- Website: www.intronautofficial.com
- Band
- Joe Lester: bass
- Danny Walker: drums
- Sacha Dunable: guitars, vocals
- Dave Timnick: guitars
- Tracklist
- 01. Killing Birds with Stones
- 02. The Welding
- 03. Steps
- 04. Sore Sight for Eyes
- 05. Milk Leg
- 06. Harmonomicon
- 07. Eventual
- 08. Blood from a Stone
- 09. The Way Down
