Turzi

On their debut album, A, Parisian quintet Turzi deliver a succession of hard, vaguely menacing arpeggiated guitar and keyboard melodies, murky drones and beats ranging from motorik, to martial, to purely primal. For the most part, the album amounts to a blunted take on Goblin's '70s horror movie soundtracks, with strong echoes of krautrock, proto-industrial and obscure French acts from the same period. While it takes courage to make a record as monolithic in tone as A, Turzi's brand of speedy, tranced-out prog could benefit from a bit more ingenuity.

The predictability of the arrangements is especially regrettable because many of the tracks, such as "Acid Taste" and "A Notre Pere," begin with strong lead melodies and an intriguing, ritualistic sense of atmosphere. Toward its latter half, tracks like "Authority 17" begin moving the album in a more noticeably rock direction, the lead guitar parts shifting between sludgy metal and spiky post-punk, while keyboards rise up and down the minor scales. It's the epic, multi-part closer, "Axis of Good," however, that serves as perhaps the best encapsulation of both Turzi's potential and their shortcomings—as the song progresses, they build momentum with each major of change of tone, but then fritter it away by resorting to the same lockstep guitar-and-synth march that has prevailed throughout the record. Repetition can be transcendent but there must be novelty and nuance in what's being repeated.

—Nate Cunningham
09.06.07

Turzi starts out "A," the first song on his album of the same name, with a refined synthesized staccato in the vain of Tangerine Dream and builds over the course of the release into chugging minimalist grooves. In an attempt to make this a conceptual album, each song starts out with the first letter of the alphabet. There's "Afghanistan," a Middle Eastern synth and guitar rocker, "Acid Taste," a driving, mechanical ditty, and the winding, proggish melancholy of "Axis of Good." These songs are all hard-driving, slightly jagged, up-tempo jams that take cues from Kraftwerk side-project Neu!, and French psychedelic artists like Kill for Total Peace and Aqua Nebula Oscillator. As a bonus, this release comes with a code that can be redeemed for a free downloadable compilation of similar-minded artists titled "Voyage: Facing the History of French Modern Psychedelic Music." Despite the fact that psychedelic music is typically loose and free-flowing, modern French psych is extremely clinical and, more often than not, the song foundations are largely instrumental over straight 4/4 beats. When there are lyrics, they are softly uttered through rivers of reverb over the eerie hammering rhythms. Either album would make a perfect soundtrack for a night drive in a Trans Am T-top winding through the cool breezes of a Transylvanian hillside. A distant familiarity and timelessness are abundant throughout A especially when "Attila Blues," a sped up, tom-heavy, Love & Rockets number, explores "another world/in another time/in another place/with another face." At times, parts of the record become monotonous, and sometimes particular sections stretch and drag, but overall this is a strong endeavor that effectively re-creates music from the past with slightly warmer electro updates to make it all seem relevant, and it should be interesting to see what the letter B will bring -- brainy blips and beats that belong in the background of Blade Runner, presumably. ~ Jason Lymangrover, All Music Guide