Just when you thought you heard it all, not only have you not, but you're left with a feeling that you've just witnessed something so unusual, you might not ever hear it again in this lifetime!

I think this is what they call "Avant Garde" as it applies to those among the state-of-the-art performers and their twisted visions of where exactly that last corridor of space is that music has left to crawl into…

All at once, Faultline, fittingly titled, as the sound quickly shudders, shakes, cracks and completely forges into something quite different than when it began… deeply moving, for one thing, strangely hedonistic for another-I can't really explain it all, my vocabulary simply hasn't evolved enough to translate any less roughly that which I'm hearing.

"Awake" fills the air with quirky mechanical sounds and noise that stem from modern machinery and a personality trait on the brink of a breakdown.

Yet the flighty nature of woodwinds and silent chirping graces the opening of song two, "Tiny Consumer," before the strings take effect offering brief glimpses of life amidst gaping spatial silence and wonder…

One can only imagine if there were words that accompanied the music, where they might go, and what they might tell.

As it is, the imagination's already set to dangerously high parameters keeping time with all that's happening around it.

"Mute" enraptures a dark beauty, slowly unfolding with a ripple-like effect, transient and comforting where the smooth flow of jazz can be heard in the background of this eight-minute menagerie…

The closest I can think of to what this might sound like is something New Wet Kojak did a while back only to the extreme left of the center of gravity… the pull is just demanding, sucking you into a world of dazzling colors and imperceptible sequences mastered feverishly by the mind of one David Kosten and a cavalcade of contributing instrumentalists.

"Control" features some background babbling-almost like a recorded message before the xylophone chimes in and another distorted moment is upon us… and still I can't make out a thing they're saying but it's definitely an answering machine message.

We can really go no further in the description of "Closer Colder…" it really is a listening adventure that advances far beyond the realm of human understanding.

Captivating yet disquieting, soothing and savage, it's a fusing of club-sized beats with a peaceful tranquillity of free-flowing and soft jazz and new age glistening… modern art depicted on the canvas of the ever inquisitive mind…

Released by Thirsty Ear Records

Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu]