By Deuce
It’s difficult—as in, a truly onerous task—to keep track of how many times one tells oneself during a listen to Emerge, the forthcoming album from quartet Son Cesano, which is set to drop on November 4, “do I need to get a copy of this?”
Matter of fact, that same sentiment applies to simply perusing about halfway through the album. Hell, you could say the same thing after working your way through just two cuts.
For any inquiries that persistent, that incessant, the answer is apparent enough. Yet the reasons for deriving such a conclusion are worth waxing about, at length.
For starters, though there is a drummer involved (Dominik Zgraggen, that is), everything else is pure strings, with Julian Betschart on the bass and Simon Marty and Robin Weissen on what sounds like a plenitude of guitars. There’s no keys, no middlemen, no vocalists. Just vibes, rhythms, and reasoning, all coming from the foresaid instruments.
Thus, purely in terms of musicality, the conviction of the quartet is greater, perhaps, than that of the vast majority of other bands endowed with the above elements.
Sometimes, what is conjured and evoked by Cesano is unadulterated beauty, such as some of the more transcendent moments on “Ruskial”. Tubed guitars and mild wah wahs set the mood with abundant space, a dearth of drumming, and even bass at times to simply takeover the mind and the hearts of those with imaginations, sensibilities, and aspirations. At other moments the track becomes a sunny day’s ride into nowhere, the stereo blasting and not a thing awry anywhere in sight.
The bass groove that’s the very soul of “The Nordic One” is as cogent as any to be published this entire year. Again, the ability to dress it up with chords atypical of those of the keyboards that usually would be on this mid-tempo affair, but do so instead with effective, reflective guitars, is one of the highlights of the album—particularly when the lead comes in and it’s all but impossible to keep one’s head from bobbing approbation.
“The Mystic Four” is an outing in which the guitars (electric, yet never overly raging as most manifestations of this instrument are post rock and roll) simply trickle gentle rivers of sound, wavering in the foreground. With this combination, and the aesthetic of the gentlemen displayed on this project, there are no misses, and nothing but…
