Frogg Cafe
Bateless Edge

The tones are somber: it's like moving under a sky covered with heavy dark clouds reverberating with echoes of threatening lightning. You need to find shelter because the downpour is about to break at any moment; you constantly feel it in the incoherent progression of bass and xylophone, in that piercing violin, in the drum restarts. Judgment day-like horn sounds seem to interrupt the stormy atmosphere for a few seconds, only to plunge it back into total unease.

“Aho! Ma che te stai a sentì?” says my roommate, suddenly opening my room's door. He stares at me reproachfully. Indeed, this album is not among my usual listens.

“Ma che so 'ste trombette.. fà 'na cosa, metti l'ultimo dei Pantegan, senti 'nt'è bbello!” he tells me, stopping the Frogg Café's music. Oh well, I'll listen to them later.

“La musica de Ben Hur se stava a ascoltà..” he mutters, leaving the room after changing my CD.

I have to wait to resume my listening until my dear roommate leaves, and fortunately, this happens five minutes later. So I remove his CD (it's tough to share an apartment with a metalhead..) and put mine back on. Cloudy sky and stormy clouds, as I was saying...

Aside from weather forecasts, the scenario described above is evoked by the latest album of a very interesting fusion band: they are Frogg Café, from New York, and their "Bateless Edge" is – at times – a decidedly challenging listen. As my roommate testified.

Epic music from a group of devoted Zappa worshippers (they started as a cover band of the great Frank), the influences are numerous: the most significant – besides the mustache – seems to come from the Mahavishnu Orchestra of John McLaughlin. However, there is so much mixing in this cauldron that any labeling would be insufficient in this case.

If it can give an idea, I would describe this album of river-like length as an apocalypse of dissonant music where jazz and progressive intertwine, exchanging their stylistic elements.

“Terra Sancta” opens with oriental arpeggios, and the menacing stride that pervades the entire track counterpoints the dedication of this piece to the children of 9/11 victims.

The deliberately off-key jam of piano and guitar starting at minute 6:23 is a bit hard to digest, but ultimately this is the least successful piece of the batch.

“Pasta Fazeuhl”, just from the name, evokes Magma, and although traces of Vander & co. can be found, the most present ghost haunting this long and dark track is that of King Crimson's "Lark's Tongue in Aspic", with the dissonant violin drawing incoherent spirals of melancholy (try listening to this piece lying in the darkness of your room and not feel the urge to reach for the lamp switch on the bedside table).

The suite “Under Wuhu Son”, twenty minutes divided into three pieces, is very varied and opens with delightful phrases of guitar, violin, and clarinet before the entrance of flugelhorn and heavy drums.

The very evocative tones of the first part harden in the central instrumental led by bass and distorted guitar to conclude in the jazz-rock of “Brace against the Fall”, an ideal single for its immediate appeal compared to the rest.

There's also room for a melodic opening that creeps in like a shy sunbeam: “From the Fence” is a long ballad that breaks the melancholy evoked so far with flowers and sweet melodies. To close the album, a return to storm: “Belgian Boogie Board” is another epic instrumental in the intertwining of flugelhorns, xylophone, and clarinet stretched over erratic tempo changes.

But here comes my roommate again. "Ma ancora sto casino ti stai a ascoltà?" Any attempt to persuade him to a more attentive listening is in vain. "Allora sei te.."

This music creates an atmosphere, there's nothing to be done: it dazes at first listen, it's true, but then it makes its way well in the midst of the storm. Regardless of what Pantegan fans think.