Song of the Day - December 29, 2005

Ok, this is an acquired taste. I happened to discover the Japanese avant garde band the Ruins, while perusing John Zorn's label Tazdik, which specializes in unusual contemporary music and is dedicated to delivering the artists' vision undiluted. This is music straight up, no commercial influences whatsoever. As I prepared to down the undiluted essence of the Ruins, I was definitely pleased on the effect it had on my musical palate, leaving a long aftertaste of Zappa, Yes, and ELP. On their album Symphonica the Ruins have augmented their normal duo of Tatsuya Yoshida and Sasaki Hisashi with a keyboard player and sopranos to create operatic, progressive rock of the highest order. One of my favorite tracks is the opener, "Thebes," which starts out with a threatening mix of keyboards, drums, and operatic shrieking. The song modulates between this threatening sound and a slighter calmer mood, only to progress to more operatic arias and a chaotic spoken word episode that I can only describe as absolute madness. Click here to listen.