The Imperial Hotel - The Samurai of Prog

The Imperial Hotel (The Samurai of Prog, 2014)

1. After the Echoes - 8:43
2. Limoncello - 7:57
3. Victoria's Summer Home - 2:54
4. The Imperial Hotel - 28:10
5. Into the Lake - 8:43

All I can say is, wow.  A gathering of musicians across several continents in several studios came together and created a progressive rock masterpiece.  The core of the Samurai of Prog are Marco Bernard (bass), Kimmo Porsti (drums), and Steve Unruh (vocals, flute, violin, acoustic guitar). The Samurai solicited four different keyboardists for original compositions, which they arranged, interpreted, performed, and recorded, with the help of different guest guitarists for each song, plus a few others. From this large cast of musicians and composers, it is remarkable that the album is coherent at all, much less the focused, well-paced, exciting, wildly creative success that it is.

With a glorious sunburst of a chorus as its anchor, keyboardist Octavio Stampalia's "After the Echoes" marries several different moods and movements. Up-tempo knotty verses, contrapuntal piano and bass, beautifully fragile vocals in the bridge, and heroic instrumental solos combine to stunning effect in this opener. From such bright beginnings, the playful Baroque waltz of Robert Webb's "Limoncello" continues the goodness: a melodic bass line dances with muscular synth, sprightly violin/flute, and a delicious over-the-top guitar performance from Yoshihisa Shimizu. More multi-part vocals import a wistful, Decameron-related musing.

David Myers's solo piano performance of "Victoria's Summer Home" serves as a lush, Romantic introduction to the main event: Robert Webb's "The Imperial Hotel", a dramatic, richly textured, perfectly paced musical ghost story.  Shared lead vocals between Steve and Robert tell the tale of a rich young upstart trying to buy an abandoned hotel, whose aged owner Emma will only entertain her potential buyer as a hotel guest. James plays along in hopes of making a deal, but Emma's hopes are darker and more mysterious... The story communicates well on first listen but yields new enjoyment with repeated hearings, and the music perfectly complements the action. The Samurai shine on their instruments, Webb provides inspired keyboard/synth/organ, and the stately guitar work of Glass Hammer's Kamran Alan Shikoh reaches dizzying heights in this multifaceted epic. The 28 minutes flies by and leaves you very satisfied, yet still wanting more. Ah, the yearning...

Closing the album is Linus Kase's "Into the Lake", an intricate, murky rumination on the unrecoverable past. The intense interplay of synth, violin, bass, and drums, along with the contrapuntal two-part vocals during the 19/8-time verse, all combine to create a sense of drama and disintegration that makes the piece gripping. The album as a whole moves from light to dark, freedom to capture, possibility to certainty, with the story of "The Imperial Hotel" acting as the heart and hinge, and the other songs exploring the same emotional arc through progressive adventures. Not to be missed.


Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 musical ghost stories

The Secret Island Band Jams - Resistor

The Secret Island Band Jams (Resistor, 2011)

1. Voyage 7 (improvised) - 4:01
2. Picadora (composed) - 5:01
3. Piezo Fury (improvised) - 5:25
4. All Systems Go! (composed) - 3:30
5. Dream of the Arctic Tern (improvised) - 6:12
6. Santa Anna (improvised, violin added later) - 8:16
7. Quirk (composed) - 3:47
8. Sleepytime (improvised) - 7:11
9. Double Ascent (improvised) - 15:07

Half of Resistor's superb second album Rise consisted of the humorous 40-minute narrative song suite "Land of No Groove", in which four musicians, discouraged by the drivel and fluff of modern music, seek out a new land and discover a far-out group of musicians in voluntary exile on a deserted island. The Secret Island Band Jams is Resistor's third album, all instrumental and mostly improvised, presented as the music made by the Secret Island Band, who promised to push the "record" button whenever something cool was happening.

I'm always up for an adventure, but I must be getting old, because the prospect of a jam album dismayed me at first. Never fear, Resistor transcend the limitations of the genre.  As other reviewers have noted, you probably couldn't pick out the improvised pieces versus the composed pieces without being told -- particularly the stunning opener "Voyage 7" and the murky, roiling, adventurous "Santa Anna". This is due in part to a fascinating method of communicating chord progressions mid-jam, which is elegant, inspired, and described in the liner notes. The editing is also quite good, crafting these jams into memorable, fascinating instrumentals, but the biggest reason for success here is the band.  The sympathetic interplay of the instrumentalists is truly special to hear, and the excitement is palpable.  While I do miss the vocals, this is still an album packed to the gills with fantastic music. Play it loud!

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 moments of sympathetic interplay

Rasselas - Samuel Johnson

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (Johnson, 1749)

When I started reading this, I almost immediately thought of Candide. I figured it had to be a response to it, sort of an anti-Candide, but it turns out they were both published the same year, so both authors were writing in a similar style for opposite purposes at roughly the same time. Craziness!

Samuel Johnson, the great eighteenth-century British man of letters famed for his dictionary, essays, biographies of modern poets, and an annotated, authoritative edition of Shakespeare, produced only one work of creative fiction. Rasselas reads as a fable, similar to Voltaire's aforementioned classic, but it starts from the opposite end:  where the everyman Candide starts with a fixed idea of the world that is successively challenged by the vicissitudes of life until he has to abandon it, the privileged Rasselas starts with no fixed concepts, just an undefinable yearning. Raised in luxurious seclusion as Abyssinian (Ethiopian) royalty, he yearns for something beyond meaningless pleasures. With his sister Nekayah and the wise poet Imlac, he goes out into the world to seek the type of life that will produce lasting happiness.

The story elements here are fairly simple and none too memorable. The characters are merely mouthpieces for the competing philosophies of Johnson's day, and while there is certainly wisdom in these pages, the work as a whole did not strike me as a powerful piece of writing. The climax, where Imlac discourses on the soul, is the weakest part, and it is supposed to be the strongest, since Johnson's message is that we should focus on the eternal rather than the temporal. (Definitely the anti-Candide). In his desire to evaluate all of human experience for its ability to produce earthly happiness, Johnson spends more time negating the world than expounding the eternal, and the overall effect is a lack of focus.  Though I agree with Johnson's conclusions, I have to give the writing prize to Voltaire's focused, incisive satire, rather than Johnson's meandering Platonic dialogue.

Arbitrary rating: 3 out of 5 anti-Candides

Tom Jones - Henry Fielding

The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (Fielding, 1749)

What a literary feast!  Fielding employs his rare wit and humor in this epic picaresque novel that sets out to chronicle Human Nature in all its lumps and bumps.

One day, good Squire Allworthy finds a baby left in his house, with a note asking him to take care of the child. Raising Tom alongside his nephew and heir Blifil, Allworthy loves the boys as if they were his own sons. But when Allworthy's sister (Blifil's mother) dies unexpectedly, Blifil poisons Allworthy's mind towards Tom, who is kicked out into the world to fend for himself. Secure in the knowledge of his innocence to Allworthy, yet pining for the hand of the beautiful Sophia, Tom travels the roads of England, encountering comic setbacks, unexpected bounties, and wild circumstances on his road to reconciliation.

The plot of this book really is outstanding, especially since, like all good picaresque novels, it doesn't seem to have a plot at all.  Tom and his friend Partridge go from episode to episode, stage to stage, yet very little is wasted in Fielding's narration, and everything circles back in consequence as we reach the end.  The twist at the finale probably inspired all of Dickens' melodramatic concluding scenes and revelations, yet in Fielding the twist is not only believable, but it should have been obvious from page one. Seeing everything fold into place makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

The characters are no less delightful. Fielding skillfully exploits the foibles and idiosyncrasies of human nature, and in the process, he makes his characters real: the sweet yet strong Sophia; her conniving lady's maid Mrs. Honour; the mock-pretentious schoolteacher Partridge; gruff, hot-tempered Squire Western and his urbane, dictatorial sister; the insidiously sneaky Blifil; and Tom's warm-blooded good nature all make the pages breathe.

Of course, Fielding's considerable wit practically makes the pages shake.  I laughed out loud several times while reading, whether at his knowing asides in the narrative, or more often at his comic metafictional intrusions, where he lambasts critics and playfully analyzes the art of writing and storytelling. When I was younger, I probably would have hated those chapters as interruptions of the story, but they provide a unique outlet for the author to speak candidly and hilariously, straight to the reader.

Since this novel was written in 18th century England, there are plenty of ribald jokes and bawdy incidents, all cloaked with the intention of enjoining good morals, but delivered with a wink and a nod.  And though it looks for awhile as if Tom's sins and indiscretions have sunk him into the pit, he ultimately emerges unscathed, with previous indiscretions filed under "wild oats". That's the only weak part for me, but Fielding claims his subject matter as his defense - he will not whitewash or polish his characters, but rather portray them as they are, in the most hilarious way possible.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 comic metafictional intrusions