Storm & Stress
Storm & Stress

Do you remember the movie "Memento" by Chris Nolan, the one where the protagonist forgets everything he is doing every two and a half minutes, resetting all his memories to the episode of his wife's death? Well, the debut of Storm & Stress provides an effect very similar to watching that movie, where every two and a half minutes you had to ask yourself what the hell was happening. Only here it's even worse.

Ian Williams, guitarist of the (at least then) remarkable Don Caballero, theorizes the obliteration of music simultaneously with its execution. The result is hard to describe in words, here none of the conventions of rock music are respected: there is no structure, no riffs, real "drum" beats will be two or three at most in almost an hour of playtime. However, there are three instruments, yes, the classic rock instruments, guitar, bass, and drums, endlessly chasing each other, seemingly asking each other what the meaning of all this is, why they can't stop, and then the voice, sparse and evanescent, silenced by the authority of the instrumental section, unable to describe what happens, and truly only dominant in the duet with a quirky piano in "Micah Gaugh sings all is all".

Perhaps it is useless to say that probably the innovative value of the work even exceeds its actual value. We are faced with something seriously revolutionary, at least in the rock sphere, with precedents likely only in the free jazz of Coleman or the experiments of John Cage, although unfortunately, in terms of strict quality, at least in my opinion, the results do not match those achieved by the aforementioned masters; here, sometimes, there's a bit of self-indulgence, at least in the durations of some tracks compared to the actual ideas contained (the first song (?) is a mammoth-nonsense of twelve minutes, and three other tracks surpass the ten-minute mark), but do not think that this weighs heavily during listening, after all, we're always talking about a certain Ian Williams, who certainly knows his stuff well, and knows where to choose the best (or worst) company, here well represented by the monstrous Kevin Shea on drums and the solid Eric Topolsky on bass, along with the aforementioned guest Micah Gaugh on piano. Unfortunately, however, there is a tinge of regret for this missed absolute masterpiece, even if strongly mitigated by the breath of fresh air that the work releases with every listen.

The rating here is perhaps an ungenerous 4.5, which free-form enthusiasts would do well to upgrade to 5.