Luxus

Oslo, Norway's enigmatic instrumental collective Salvatore have once again teamed up with Tortoise's John McEntire for their fifth album Luxus. And again their model is based on the post-rock explorations of McEntire's band and the Chicago scene from whence it spawned. But this album finds the band further expanding their previous forays into the kinetic forward-motion sound known as Motorik, or Krautrock, as well as some decidedly more abrasive textures which could garner them true experimental credibility. Some tracks have the smooth polyrhythmic dynamics of their past efforts, but many are focused on that sense of movement, the aural equivalent of watching the landscape pass by from a speeding vehicle. The band also appear to have come "above ground" with this album, which features credits for each song as well as multiple band photos. Again, all the tracks appear to have evolved organically: they pulse and flow like segments of improvisations, where beginning, middle, and end have no more relevance than verse, chorus, or bridge. Seemingly extemporaneous, most are content to drift along without any sense of dynamics or crescendo, and are more likely to just meander into the mix then slowly fade or crumble. The focal points are the twin themes "Fluxus" and "Luxus": the former is by far noisier than anything in the band's previous repertoire, all crashing free jazz drums and distorted sound effects that could be voices manipulated so far into the red that they come off as percussion, which all dissolves into a drum pattern like a roughly running engine and eventually implodes into distant drones; the title track is the smoother counterpart, propelled ever-forward by chiming jazz guitar figures and enchanting female vocals eventually augmented by an entire orchestra of strings. The zenith of the album is reached with "Roots and Weather," a direct descendent of Can or Neu! with tribal rhythms, skittery guitar and a recurring vocal sample sounding like some vaguely Arabic chant: a truly magnificent piece in Salvatore's most engaging album to date.