aaamusic | On 05, Sep 2011

Wait… did I wake up twenty years earlier than my normal eighties time-lag lifestyle allows? Cranium Pie are more trippy psychedelia than a cheap rainbow effects-laden flashback on a questionable sitcom. The guitars are 110% Gilmour and the mood peeps out from a haze of patchouli and pot. ‘Mechanisms’ occupies a niche for all its worth, and as can be expected, this is one hell of a double-edged sword.

While opener ‘This Was Now’ doesn’t really ever take off from its synthy space-age launch pad, it is doubtless evocative in its surreal blend of the futuristic and the mystic, as the synths fall softly into finger-picked acoustic guitar and birdsong samples that fade in and out of perception with eerily soft grace. However, the following track ‘Rememberrr’ is worth a wait. Part Beatles, mostly Pink Floyd, this is enjoyable if derivative. Silken wah-wahs and distant vocals echo through the mists, and the organ instrumental is expressive, leading onto what you readers will hopefully forgive me for referring to as a “trippy jam”, because for all intents and purposes that is what this is. A rambling, melodic, nebulous yet unified exploration of music.

I’d like to say that I like ‘Mechanisms’, but it just doesn’t… grab. ‘Zones – Mothership’ is an interesting idea, but overlong in its execution, and feels a bit like listening to seven minutes of a well-played rehearsal room jam, which has its merits, but an entire serious release of similar material just doesn’t cut it. Fluctuating between space and spaced-out, the guitar solos are stellar, ideas promising, and musicianship rather good, but the whole somehow doesn’t quite turn out the sum of its parts. Take title track ‘Mechanisms’ – a grooving intro with organ drones and a heady enjoyable melody is a promising start, but it feels like Cranium Pie just didn’t know where to go from there. Shorter tracks ‘Dry The Sun’ and ‘Run To Surive’, however, feel stunted. While the latter contains a mindbending guitar solo, the rest of the song suddenly turns all Hawkwind on us and I feel that the band were chasing an idea but never quite caught it – this has flickers of a solid track, but no… solidity, whereas ‘Dry The Sun’ just feels unfinished.

 

Cranium Pie are brave in their carving of their own space, but at the same time I feel like they’re just not ready to be widely heard. ‘Mechanisms’ has brief moments of brilliance, but unfortunately they’re all too brief and buried in a directionless heap of well-played yet derivative and unfocused sound.

Author: Katie H-Halinski