Talisma - Chromium (special)
SKU
Unicorn 5023
"Second album by Canadian progressive rock trio contains songs of pure instrumental progressive rock. Nice fluid mellotron textured songs in odd time signatures. Originally formed by Donald Fleurent in 1993, Talisma quickly gained recognition as one of the most original and promising new bands."
"I haven't heard Talisma's first album Corpus, but their new one Chromium has certainly lived up to the hype I read about their debut. A great instrumental band from Canada, Talisma is mainly led by Donald Fleurent who is not only the backbone of most of the songs, but he also produced the album and dominates almost the entire record with his fluid bass playing (and what an amazing playing at that!) using 4, 6, 7, and 12 string bass guitars. The music is very bass driven, often lending itself to jazz and fusion soundscapes. However, as a whole, Chromium is a progressive rock album with various overtones, including touches of funk, ethno-jazz, classical, and Latin. Twelve tracks span 42 minutes of music which kicks off with ethnic percussion work, great analog synths, powerful bass and instantly leads into a jazz break with sweeped arpeggios aplenty and more slap bass craze. I am truly impressed with the level of playing on this album, as each three musician has excelled in their instruments. Intense interplay between drums, bass, and guitars receives washes of Mellotron sounds and slowly segues into acoustic guitars on "Dementia" while the next track "Leviosa" is the diametric opposite of this song. Beginning with a Middle Eastern tone that is gone before you can place it, the trio delves into an insanely technical passage with exquisite drum fills functioning in a King Crimson meets Zappa-like context. Fleurent weaves quirky bass lines around Martin Vanier's exceptional guitar synths on "Nuclide" amidst a sea of dissonant notes playing in the background. The bass guitar sounds almost like Mr Bungle or perhaps any other avant garde project of Mike Patton, that is very funky playing. "Nebuleuse" is the soft synth break of the album, filled with symphonic elements, while the band explores some more acoustic driven songs backed up by thick shades of Mellotron through and through. The band finishes off with "Double", a Johann Sebastian Bach composition adapted for Fleurent's 7-string bass. Talisma is a very impressive instrumental trio in the field of prog rock that should appeal to many fans of the genre"-Murat Batmaz