From Menzies Creek in Victoria (an hours drive from Melbourne), Australia, comes a 3-piece band that was started as a studio project back in early 2004 by one Eddie Kratz. Using keyboards, synths, drum machine, and several layers of somewhat sedate vocals (his first, while he was already playing keyboards since 1980, bass since about '86, and gotten to sequencing in '97) onto which also were used some occasional effects (vocoder, alt?, etc...), and taking his time to write and arrange the songs, he created an electronic soundscape project around the conspiracy subject (as seen from several points of view) that must already have been quite interesting.

Yet, he felt something was still missing, and so he went on the search for a good guitarist, which he eventually found with the versatile Connie D. Through the addition of sevaral layers of guitar (one crunchy, then additional lead and synth guitar, and recorded over another long enough period) the overall sound finally resembled what Eddie envisioned, bein' a "Hybrid" Metal with elements of electronic, Industrial, and Progressive. The serenely sedate multilayered vocals (there's not even one morent on this album that you can hear only óne layer of vocals) are done at several layers of tonality, which makes for a somewhat hypnotising choral effect. Regretably, the calmness of the vocals (with only 11 tracks, it is a staggering 77 minutes long) is also spread out throughout the album, which may induce into the unexperienced listener's mind the idea of having heard certain things already. Making things hard for such persons to listen to the album in one take. The more experienced among us however, will be thrilled at all the different layers to uncover in the overall very melodic music, discovering new details with every listening session. One exception to the multi-layered vocals as on the rest of the album comes with the rather spoken word 10-minute plus "This They Must Never Know", which reads like the manifesto for the "Illuminati"! Also, the song is musically mainly electronic and Ambient in music style.

The album finally got mastered in March of last, and is now available in mp3 form through the band's website mechanicalorganic.org. I share Eddie's fear that it will take Mechanical Organic some time to find an interested label, the era for this kind of music was rather situated around the change of the Eighties to the Nineties. Still, with all kinds of music being revived these days, there's really no reason why they shouldn't be picked up eventually, because their music simply oozes quality, no matter which track you're listening to!

Contemplating to bring their music live on stage (with the aid of triggers and samples), they've looked out for a live drummer, which they found through a friend of Eddie's in one Laurence Belviso. As additional trivia, I'd like to mention that Eddie also plays in Pathway To Perfection, and Connie also in Connie D's instru-MENTAL & Furious George Inc. As far as I am concerned, they get a perfect rating on their current material, and a mention in my "Best Albums Of 2006" list! I'm even already pondering on questions for an e-mail interview (...and ways to spread that around)!

Points : 98/100

Tony