Bardo Pond
Amanita

This album (the third by Bardo Pond) came out when "Ten Rapid" by Mogwai was released, which is thought-provoking: if the slew of bands today doing "covers" of Mogwai also knew "Amanita," they would realize how everything is relative and that perhaps music from 15 years ago should be left to 15 years ago.

I couldn't even bring myself to think about listening to Bufo Alvarius, hailed by many as Bardo Pond's masterpiece, because I sincerely and prejudicedly hate the concept of a "long track." In practice, after listening to Floyd's suites thousands of times, the only long pieces I can stand later are "Recurring Dreams" and probably, the only one from the '90s, "Limerick" from this album... I just can't resist "Limerick"; though I aesthetically and philosophically hate the concept of a long track in rock, I can't resist "Limerick"...

"Limerick" is a nocturnal storm, a perpetuation of gigantic waves, a continuous swirl inside the ocean, wind and water and night, one of the most intense tracks you can listen to in that fanfare to the futile form that after 1991 went under the name of "post-rock." I've already spent two lines telling you that that track alone is worth buying (and even more, downloading) the album. The album, for the rest, unwinds between the great flaw of relentless pretentiousness (70 minutes of music; there’s always a reason behind the length), and choices that, on the other hand, leave their mark: where My Bloody Valentine is just around the corner, Bardo Pond always shifts towards an adventurous psychedelia characterized by the most incompetent, awkward, and barely perceptible use of vocals that I've ever heard: which gives some tracks a terribly surreal effect, further emphasized by a use of guitars and structures that can often remind one of absurd deconstructors like Polvo.

If Bardo Pond hadn't had the perhaps absurd pretension of renewing (psychedelic) rock by bastardizing its coordinates within the canons of its paroxysmal formalization, they would be one of the greatest bands of the '90s. From my point of view, they are half accomplished; the good half is of qualitatively gigantic proportions.