{"id":21449,"date":"2021-08-21T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T09:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21449"},"modified":"2021-08-20T11:45:43","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T15:45:43","slug":"album-review-mahogany-frog-in-the-electric-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/21\/album-review-mahogany-frog-in-the-electric-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Mahogany Frog \u2013 In the Electric Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-21450\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/mahogany_frog.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/mahogany_frog.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/mahogany_frog-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/mahogany_frog-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>These days, much of what sees release through Leonardo Pavkovic\u2019s venerable MoonJune label tends toward jazz\/fusion. That\u2019s great, as the label brings some of the best those styles have to offer to a wider audience. But it\u2019s nice to find the occasional progressive rock entry, something that \u2013 while ambitious \u2013 appeals to a slightly wider potential listener base.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s very much the case with <i>In the Electric Universe<\/i>, the seventh(!) album from Canadian neo-prog\/psych outfit Mahogany Frog. The instrumental group combines classic textures (such as electric guitars with their signal run through a Leslie speaker) with more modern sounds (like brown-note bass bombs a la Flaming Lips). The result is music that\u2019s hypnotic, engaging and catchy without being \u201cpoppy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those who enjoy epic-length compositions that take the listener on a sonic journey will delight in tunes like \u201cTheme From P.D.\u201d and the nearly eighteen-minute \u201c(((Sundog\u201d))).\u201d Mahogany Frog isn\u2019t exactly what our friends at Progarchives would define as orchestral prog, but that kind of nuanced, deeply layered sensibility does very much inform the group\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n<p>The group makes something of an effort to lean in an unconventional direction, with keening sounds that clash up against one another. But there\u2019s an underlying groove \u2013 alternatingly pulsing, throbbing, stomping \u2013 that keeps things rooted in an accessible musicality.<\/p>\n<p>Mahogany Frog makes use of song titles that recall early King Crimson: a handy example is \u201cOctavio (Including: The Ascension of the Moonrise Children).\u201d But the classical\/jazz feel that informed early Crimson doesn\u2019t figure prominently into the band\u2019s sound. Instead, there\u2019s an engaging reliance on synthesizer textures, with comparatively minimal use of guitars, drums and the like. That said, In the Electric Universe\u2019s tonality is so rich and varied that it doesn\u2019t exactly sound like a \u201ckeyboards\u201d album.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, how the sounds are created on this album is of less importance than the manner in which they are used. And thye are used in an impressive way, one that should appeal to devotees of prog, trance, space rock and other accessible-yet-exploratory musics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These days, much of what sees release through Leonardo Pavkovic\u2019s venerable MoonJune label tends toward jazz\/fusion. That\u2019s great, as the label brings some of the best those styles have to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,56,57,65,4071],"tags":[4620,4621],"class_list":["post-21449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-prog","category-psych","category-review","category-trance","tag-mahogany-frog","tag-moonj","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-56-id","cat-57-id","cat-65-id","cat-4071-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21451,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21449\/revisions\/21451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}