Chemical Composition – Excitement Within The Trojan Horse

Listening to music should never be difficult. Making it on the other hand can prove to be impossible. And with a genre like free form, improvisational jazz, you’re goal is to somehow transmit raw energy and emotion to a listener without words or a clear melody. Chemical Composition has attempted to capture their endeavor on Excitement Within The Trojan Horse and came close to accomplishing their goal.

With improvisational jazz, I find the title of the track more as a guideline for what the artist envisioned for the piece than the dominating theme that crowds your mind as you listen to the music. And with a vague title like “Imaginary Habitat,” the direction of the song is up to the listener altogether. I did feel in tune with Chemical Composition on the naming of “Hang-Gliding With Organ” due to its density. It made me understand what it would feel like to hang glide with an organ replacing the hang glider, for over five minutes.

I find it very challenging to have more than one instrument improvising at once and having a cohesive sound that is in sync with a theme. The percussionist, John Cacciatore, does a good job of meshing with the other instruments while they improvise but I often found myself lost while the piano and guitar/bass were on the scene. I felt most comfortable with “Gray Rainbow, Gray Rainbow, Gray Rainbow, Gray Rainbow, Gray Rainbow” and “Building Site For A Bar” as the musicians seemed to play well with each other and not overload my ears with notes. At times I felt that less could definitely have been more, in the sense that instead of continually playing some of the instruments could have contributed more with more bars of silence. The title track lost me in its late introductions of piano and guitar distortions. The “excitement” quickly lost its fervor as the sitar echoed in the back.

I couldn’t help but imagine the countless silent films I’ve watched at school, studying cinema, while I listened to this album. The soundtracks to those films usually contained a free form genre of music to mirror the then-novel movements on screen. Except I couldn’t picture any of these songs to go along with a silent film due to their individual lack of stability. The band achieved their goal of playing by the “immutable macro-rhythms” of everyday life, per their bio, but I doubt the average person wants to attempt to decipher heavily layered improvisations in order to relive those moments of a busy day.

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2.5 / 5 bars

Chemical Composition – “SWRRRVE”

Chemical Composition – Gray Rainbow

Chemical Composition – “Gray Rainbow”

Chemical Composition – “Hang-Gliding With Organ”