Rangda
Formerly Extinct

The supergroup Rangda has reached their second album, a spontaneous divertissement of three of the best folk and rock improvisers around. It consists of the free jazz-style drummer Chris Corsano, Ben Chasny on guitar, better known as Six Organs Of Admittance, and Sir Richard Bishop on the other guitar, an artist similar to Chasny but on the folk drone side.

If the first “False Flag” showed fascinating insights but often got lost in excessive instrumental overthinking and duration, this does not happen in “Formerly Extinct”, which capitalizes on the previous insights, overcoming many clichés that an instrumental improvisation album can carry.
It seems like an oxymoron, since improvisation would mean absolute freedom, but, to quote CCCP, freedom is a form of discipline, so it often happens that you hear improvisational-style albums very similar to each other. “Formerly Extinct” escapes all this thanks to the crystal-clear talent of the three, precise in the breaks, imaginative in the phrasing, and above all concise in the track durations (except for the almost 12 minutes of “Silver Nile”, a slow-motion vision of “Dark Star” by the Grateful Dead and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” by the Floyd).

The tracks are also very varied from one another; if the opening “Idol’s Eye” could be an Indian version of Don Caballero, the following “The Vault” grazes for half of its 4 mins in dissonant free prairies, before transfiguring into a kind of cosmic blues. If there can be a common thread, it's the taste for raga-like guitar lines (probably Bishop's contribution), well-present in “Majnun” and hovering throughout the album. Although they give their best in tracks like “Plugged Nickel” and “Night Porter” (Fugazi without vocals but with lots of acid in their veins?), or in the growing anticipation of “Tres Hambres” and the hypnotic nursery rhyme of “Goodbye Mr. Gentry”.

Surprise album of the just-past 2012.