Artist: Maschine
Title: Rubidium
Genre: Progressive Rock
Release Date: 29th July 2013
Label: Insideout
Album Review
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. And presumably its title. But with ‘Rubidium’, from “rising stars” (it says here) UK band MASCHINE it’s hard not to. The cover-art is truly horrible, fussy and glaring, reminiscent of some of those album covers you frequently saw in bargain-bins in the basement of Woolworths, back in the Eighties. And the title? Rubidium is a chemical element (yawn), one part of which has a half-life of 49 billion years. So it’s boring, and goes on for a very long time then. And that’s the problem here. Progressive Rock is all about being technical, its similarity to jazz, when it’s done right, making it the thinking-person’s Saturday night in. The songs are meant to feel free, both in structure, tempo and length, but there’s also order to be stamped over the whole. This is why the phrase “concept album” is most often used in this genre.
But what we have with MASCHINE is a hollow version of this. It’s technical to the point of being annoying, which leaves a strange coldness over the whole, occasional flashes of emotion and subtlety swamped too soon by more virtuoso noodling. The guitars throughout sound beefy, modern even, but the keyboards are dreadful, wrenching you back to the very worse parts of the 1970’s. Flabby and self-indulgent, the back-slapping that must go on while recording this kind of nonsense ought to be added to the mix. Because everything else is. There simply doesn’t seem to be any point to any of this. Intriguing titles like ‘Cubixstro’ and ‘Eyes Pt.1 and 2’ go on for an age, and in amongst the interminable solos there’s some pretty uninspiring singing as well. Pity, as the opening couple of minutes to ‘The Fallen’ sound like Steve Hogarth from MARILLION has popped up for a quick verse. But sadly not.
To some, perhaps those who like to take things apart and put them back together again “to see how they work”, this will no doubt be a masterpiece. But it isn’t. There can be few less satisfying ways of spending an hour than trying to make sense of this. Go for a walk or something. You’ll be so glad you did.
Tracklist
01. The Fallen
02. Rubidium
03. Cubixstro
04. Invincible
05. Venga
06. Eyes Pt.1
07. Eyes Pt.2
08. Chains (Bonus track)
09. Reach Out (Bonus track)
Line-up
Luke Machin – Guitars, Vocals
Daniel Mash – Bass, Vocals
Georgia Lewis – Keyboards, Vocals
Elliott Fuller – Guitars
James Stewart – Drums
Website
http://www.maschineuk.com/ / https://www.facebook.com/maschineuk
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 3
Sound: 3
Total: 3 / 10
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