Aucan - African Tape [Album]

Afriacantape/Ruminance

December 21, 2008, 11:44 PM

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I'll be honest I didn't know what to expect from this band. Before I requested this, I listened to these guys on MySpace and they actually quite impressed me with their mix of piano/electronic rock and at the time it seemed inspiring and uplifting to hear a band that stuck out from the rest and liked to experiment with - by the sounds of their album - anything they can get their hands on.

The Italian band is a three-piece which incorporates guitar with keyboards mixed with drums for good measure. Their first track on this CD is entitled "Reset" and it sounds very familiar to a tense scene of a horror movie when the little girl is creeping down the corridor and hears the creeks of the door, and the sound of wind chimes rattling in the storm. Why it features on the album, I'm not sure. It's just basically random noise thrown together to stretch the album it seems?! However, this leads to the first real full-length track which goes by the symbol "-". I don't know where these guys get their names from, but it's certainly strange. I was glad to hear the drums coming into this song and the bass guitar riffing up in the background to make quite a sound similar to 'Muse' but without the piano. Don't get me wrong, these guys are nothing like Muse because it's obvious they want to be in a different category than everyone and stand out from the crowd - way out.

The next track "Iena" [which means Hyena in English] certainly gives the impression of just that. You can imagine yourself in a forest [with this being the soundtrack] while you trek through it watching all around you searching for that little bit of light to guide your way. With this track, I would sub-categorise them as a little metal as they certainly like to fire it out in this song similar to old Nightwish. "Urano", their next song, is fairly similar to it's predecessor. Rough, pacey and demands to be heard. It's shorter than the last song with a bit little less energy, however, it is still very good.

Aucan now slow it down to a slow keyboard intro with "Fauna". The bass riffs back in, building up with the drums to provide a solid platform for the triplet to build on. Their music does get quite repetitive though. Without vocals and lyrics though, that can't be helped too much. These guys are exceptional musicians and I can only imagine how interesting a gig of theirs would be. "Ac Ha B" is missing some much-needed vocals included, in my opinion, like many of their songs. To my confusion (and annoyance), we have another two tracks entitled "-". It appears that "-" to Aucan, constitutes an musical interlude and not something that the band consider a final track, however, I may be completely off the ball with that judgement.

Their last three songs could have easily been shortened as it's just riff and bridges repeated over and over again and that's something I can't be bothered listening to without vocals in there. There are solos mixed amongst them, good ones at that, but the big thing lacking for me is the vocals which takes them from a potentially an amazing band to just a good band. To be honest, I don't think that they would welcome a front man in there singing his heart out, as they blatantly just want to play their instruments non-stop and enjoy the jam and to let all the attention be on them and their instrumental abilities. I'm not saying that's not a good thing, but it's certainly not for me.

http://www.myspace.com/aucan

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