Full Earth – Cloud Sculpters

 

 

Full Earth – Cloud Sculpters
Stickman Records – 2024
Rock, Prog, Fusion, Kraut, Instrumental
Rated: ***

It was released a week ago digitally, the debut album by the new five-piece from Oslo called Full Earth. Formed by Kanaan-drummer Ingvald André Vassbø to see even more of his inspirations, ideas and conceptions come to live. He immediately implored the aid of his two Kanaan companions, guitarist Ask Vatn Strøm and bassist Eskild Myrvoll, who plays guitar, synth and samples for this album. To round out the quintet he got jazz bassist Simen Wie and for keys and organ Øystein Heide Aadland who you might know from the Drongo project. Well, together they formed a band whose names and deeds were to be retold throughout history and their first album would be called: Cloud Sculptures. A prog rock extravaganza lasting almost one and a half hours. Divided into six tracks, four of which lasting from almost fifteen minutes to over twenty minutes. And two shorter compositions. If that sounds big, you will feel dwarfed when you finally start listening. The first two compositions are an album in their own right, totaling forty-one minutes, and spending all those minutes in a whirling progressive adventure, which feels as imaginative as it feels powerful. Building segments, prolonged releases, expert instrumentation and with so much happening around you that you will feel the world spin out of control around you. And as you become overwhelmed by the entire experience, they manage to give you just the perfect handle to hold on to and to keep moving forward. And on some level you will never want Full Earth Pt1 – Emanation or the following title track Cloud Sculptures to end. And that is why third track Weltgeist, feels as the unwelcome interlude, a rude gaseous stopping point for the cosmic trip you were on. The bathroom break you did not need. On some level I can understand the need for this kind of extrapolation of vaporous keywork, but it seems out of tune with all that you had been experiencing on those first two tracks. Even though fourth track The Collective Unconscious starts by building on Weltgeist, but you immediately feel this is going places. It will not stay the intangible essence of what Weltgeist turns out to be. And by that fourth track you are already an hour deep into Cloud Sculptures and there is still so much more to come. And yes, I am all for more and more and just a bit more. But as Echo Tears bubbles over me, I cannot help but think, that like Weltgeist, it feels out of tune with the other tracks. Where everything on the album became more and more, more instrumentation, more segments, more minutes of wonderful prog rock, Echo Tears turned a minimalist corner. There is wonderment here, and there is a definite trance inducing capability about the entire organ driven arrangement as they dance around each other. But it’s almost as if it’s meant for an entirely different experience than those prog rock wonders of before. Even though, once again final track Full Earth Pt II – Disintegration does build upon the resonance left behind by Echo Tears. Slowly turning into a chaotic overture, destroying time signatures, melodicism and then turning back around and into this dynamic, but still extremely turbulent abstract, and expressionistic drip like prog. It is wild, awe-inspiring, shocking, and so is looking back on the almost one and half hours of Full Earth. There is so much and perhaps, and I hardly ever say this, there is a too much. It’s difficult to wrap your mind around all you heard and experienced. Full Earth is so full of everything, it might make your head explode. Perhaps that is the reason there is so much. Ingvald André Vassbø had to let everything out… Cause if you are so extremely full of ideas and inspiration, you’d better let it out… If not, you might explode...

(Written by JK)

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