TALIBAM! - Talibam!

Time for historical recurrences.

Remember late-90s rock? Bands like Us Maple, Gorge Trio and Storm&Stress, who carried forward the idea, not even that far-fetched, of changing rock through free improvisation?

Well, back then quite a few people believed in it, but something was evidently lost along the way, and the final nail in the coffin of that season came with the - admittedly worthwhile - normalization of Us Maple, the increasingly stubborn confinement of Gorge Trio to niche contexts (not to mention John Dieterich's full-time commitment to Deerhoof), and the breakup of Storm&Stress, with Ian Williams returning a few years later at the helm of the more "conventional" Battles.

Of the others, virtually no trace remained.

Or at least so it seemed, until it turns out that the dazzling drummer Kevin Shea is actually active in a myriad of outfits, including the interesting Coptic Light but above all the incredible Talibam!, who pull off the mad feat, in a decade of nu wave, post-psychedelia and degenerate noise-making, of reviving the improvised (and possessed) soul of rock music.

Their self-titled debut, on bare-bones cd-r, is worth remembering as a genuine collector's item: the case is made from the cardboard of an old 33rpm sleeve, and inside, alongside the disc, there's a wedge of vinyl with a Silver Apples flyer stuck on it bearing the band's scant info.

Besides Shea, also on board are Matt Mottel on synth and Ed Bear on "feedbacksaxophone".

And indeed it's no easy task to recognize the typical sound of a wind instrument amid the band's hyperbolic improvisational charges, three long untitled pieces in which the lead roles go to Mottel, who glides at breakneck speed across the keyboard with a barely concealed craft vaguely indebted to prog, though thankfully forced to keep shifting sounds and scales in a desperate chase after Shea, who is simply an alien.

Years after the fundamental looseness of Storm&Stress (which was nonetheless also the highly distinctive stylistic signature of an originality that Talibam! still seem far from), Shea comes back into play with superhuman fury (and imagination), as if to show Orthrelm and Lightning Bolt who's really in charge.

The drummer's inventions are literally endless and impossible to follow without risking your sanity.

The Talibam! machine is a shredder launched at the speed of light, and on first listens the album may well come across as far too violent and overly insistent on a single formula.

Over time, though, you notice that the band also enjoys poking fun at most of the clichés of today's rock, starting with those of the "coolest" exponents of the more dance-oriented punk-funk wave.

Indeed, at several points on the record the trio suddenly stage, right in the middle of the chaos, spot-on wave-rock refrains that are invariably sped up within moments, only to be immediately shredded again in the instrumental mayhem that kicks back in more furious than before.

In the final minutes of the first track, for instance, there's more than enough material for the next few albums by Rapture and Franz Ferdinand.

Among the variations on an approach that, it must be said, still lacks a bit of eclecticism, worth noting are the central section of the second track, which eases off the frenzied tempo to drift for a couple of minutes through martial doom cadences with the synth up front, and the almost psychedelic intro of the closing track.

The result, in short, still isn't quite the hybrid of Xenakis, Cecil Taylor and black music that the group seems to be aiming for, but this debut is an absolute bomb, no two ways about it.

Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen to rock music (in a very broad sense) in quite some time.

Ride the wave of great music

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01/09/2013