Artist: Athana
Title: Beats & Pieces
Format: 12"
Label: West Audio Music
Rated: Four out of five stars
Each time I approach to Alf Terje Hana's guitar compositions I tend to think about Fripp and his tunes where without any kind of boundaries he express himself using the guitar as a medium. Since from the opening track of the latest Athana album titled BEATS & PIECES, Alf mix free jazz, rock and a bit of funk to create a running train called 'I.O. Roni' (which is inspired by a Roni Size performance he watched on BBC at the 'Jools Holland' show). This album gathers new tracks, collaboration and remixes and the second track is one of the two remixes you'll find here. Sternklang (an electronic artist coming from Norway), remix 'Luskesangen' and after an initial ambient start he started the song keeping the distinctive Athana sound adding processed sounds. 'Lifeform 47' is an experimental i.d.m./dub track and sees Togeir Nes (the band member behind the electronic programming) giving his best. 'Fuzz off' born from a collaboration with an electronic musician hidden behind the Kaoss 99 moniker and it sounds like a fuzz guitar preparing to ride the space to land on a new planet. 'Alien elephants' is the second remix and the Parisian electronic artist Lingouf is at the mixing desk giving to the jazzy mysterious original tune a distorted break beat treatment, making of it a furious track which goes insane at end of its ten minutes of length. The closing track is a radio edit version (four minutes shorter) of the opening 'I.O. Roni'. It sounds good and I prefer this one to the longer version but I don't know why Athana did such choice, because they don't differ too much. Anyway, BEATS & PIECES confirms Athana as an inspired project that is willing to create out of time involving music.
id#5897 Review by: Maurizio Pustianaz [ maurizio {dot} pustianaz {at} chaindlk {dot} com ]