Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to secure much information about US-based three-piece improvisational band Bosch, other than that their membership consists of Christopher Brown (drums, vocals, electronics, percussion), Charles Greenleaf (guitar, keyboards, trumpet, percussion, vocals, bass) and Kevin Sims (bass, guitar, electronics). They’ve also got something of an impressive musical pedigree with Brown having co-founded the Random Touch multimedia collective, as well as engaging in academic study with a range of master drummers from the sixties onward, before going on to play with the University of Chicago’s Symphony Orchestra. While the NASA-photographed nebula sleeve art encasing this debut self-titled album at first perhaps suggest a prog/ambient wander ahead, in reality the thirteen tracks gathered here see Bosch traversing far more unpredictable and rhythmically complex waters – indeed, it’s hard to think of a genre tag that really accurately describes what they’re doing. While opener ‘Dreaming Of Daybreak’ sees Bosch slowly creating an almost impenetrable mesh of metallic percussion and snares that gradually unfurls from a few sketch-like strokes into a dense rhythmic forest amidst sudden, unpredictable bursts of almost cheesy synth-trumpet, ‘Aspire All Around You’ plays a completely different sonic card entirely, ushering forth a brief, almost naive-sounding noodle on analogue synths that’s slowly given a more tense undertow courtesy of gathering percussion, moody keys and ascending guitar fretwork.
The contorted ‘A Long Way From Home’ meanwhile sees chaotically tapped out guitar licks skittering back and forth over rattling, rockist drums and eerie background samples, in what’s easily the most psychedelic early Butthole Surfers-esque freakout on offer here, while ‘Walkabout’ almost sees the trio playing it comparatively straight with a slow wander through moody, circling guitar strokes and abstracted martial snares that slowly descends into delayed-out flameout of feedback and guitar echo. There’s certainly an almost Zappa-esque sense of twisted humor at play here also – witness the weirdly pitch-shifted, oddly Ween-reminiscent vocals that slide against eerie reversed guitar tones and skittering sleighbells on the near-ambient ‘Savor The Fall’, and the stoned-sounding surreal monologue (“people don’t realise how naked audio is”) that floats over a woozy backdrop of burbling keyboards, synth sounds and shaker noises on the downright trippy ‘Everything Begins.’ All things considered, this is an intriguing debut album that sees Bosch melting away the barriers between free-jazz, psychedelic noise and math-rock with considerable style.
Chris Downton
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