Cave - Threace

The latest Cave five-track release was given out with the flash sentence "Intrumental psychedelic drone - what more can you ask for?" attached - inspiring only a response of, "Maybe some music that actually sounds like psychedelic drone...?".

Heavily influenced by Krautrock and labelled as 'psychedelic drone', there's not really enough drone on Threace, or psych for that matter. Threace is part John Zorn, part Neu! In fact, so much Neu! that second track 'Silver Headband' sounds like a rip-off of 'Hallogallo'. The John Zorn comes in on intro track 'Sweaty Fingers' - a funk beat to start, turning into a monotinous bassline (a bit of drone) and continuing to the end. Barely experimental.

There are a few influences from the Krautrock era, as there have been in Cave's previous releases, but third track 'Arrow's Myth' leans heavily towards experimental jazz-rock. It's much more interesting than the opening track with warped guitar sounds, off-tempo beats, and some flute and sax creeping in.

The same prog-like tempos, textured sounds and soaring scales prevail on 'Shikaakwa', upbeat and interesting, leading into a slow and dreamy 'Slow Bern', with vague psych leanings and a touch of drone in the bassline, but one-out-of-five tracks isn't good enough to keep the label.

Maybe this is a new direction for Cave after recordings such as 'Wuj' (from last release Neverendless 2011), which was psych-drone. On other tracks from the same album such as 'On the Rise' you could sense this turning point about to happen. Threace is quite a beautiful album, unexpectedly so, but the composition, techniques and layers contained in it aren't done justice by giving it such a misleading genre tag.