Art Rock Show – Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate – The Uncertainty Principle (Week 20)

De Londense band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate bestaat uit Malcolm Galloway en Mark Gatland, alleen of met Kathryn Thomas. Ze combineren prog/alt-rock, klassiek, minimalistisch en elektronische elementen. Ze verkennen vaak wetenschappelijke, sci-fi en historische thema’s.

DME review: “A concept album about a scholastic concept might seem repulsive in its meta severity, yet it’s essential for many progressive rock artists to pursue this course, but while lesser mortals would find it irresistible enough to leave their feelings, as opposed to cerebral stance, outside of such record, Mark Gatland and Malcolm Galloway know better than to remove human factors from their music. So, adding half-imaginary storylines to the titular idea, as formulated by Werner Heisenberg about a hundred years ago, and rendering him as a presence on a couple of tracks here, the pair of pals who have been weaving sonics together since their school days infused “The Uncertainty Principle” with emotions without simplifying neither sophisticated arrangements nor lyrical approach. There’s no perceiving the complex theory as not seeing the wood for the trees, yet the natural beauty of sound is there.

Not that this sound is serene: all breathtaking passages on display come filled with tuneful anxiety, often cinematically anguished but unwaveringly moving; and not for nothing the album’s first single, the relentlessly heavy “One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov)” which deals with the Cuban Missile Crisis, provides impressive common art-rock ground for blues licks and pop sensibilities. (…)

However, if “Cause And Effect (But Not Necessarily In That Order)” adds jazzy splashes, trance jive and baroque solemnity to the platter’s instrumental palette, immensely expanding its scope and blending the incongruous textures to create sublime harmonies, and “The Ultraviolet Catastrophe” rolls out a barely reined-in swagger, the record’s titular mini-epic transmogrifies the Brits’ flight of fantasy into a flute-flaunting widescreen adventure. And though “Inside The Atom” heightens the album’s ambience via multilayered arrangement where subliminal patterns tie tangible knots on the listener’s psyche, and “The Think Tank” offers a disturbingly invigorating, nigh-orchestral package of uplift and rage, the chamber ballad “Between Two Worlds” flows quietly towards the twangy, funky “Living With Uncertainty” which twists the finale exquisitely tight. There’s no doubt with regard to this work’s magnificence: “The Uncertainty Principle” is simply great.”

Naast Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate (The Uncertainty Principle), Fernando Perdomo (Out to Sea), Cheeto’s Magazine (Amazingous), Prehistoric Animals (Livefires), Jonas Lindberg & the Other Side (Miles From Nowhere) & Bomber Goggles (Gyreland).

• Thursday/Donderdag 12.00 – 24.00
• Friday/Vrijdag 12.00 – 24.00
• Saturday/Zaterdag 12.00 – 24.00