Insider, Event Horizon: Gravitational Pull
The prevailing impression of Insider‘s Event Horizon is one of transition. In that way, the 59-minute offering from the Italian heavy psych/prog trio, released through Andruid Records, very much lives up to its title, which refers to the precipice at which one can no longer retreat from the gravitational pull from a black hole. It is the band’s fifth or sixth full-length, and follows last year’s Vibrations from the Tapes (review here), which collected nearly 80 minutes of jams recorded in 2007. Event Horizon isn’t quite so overwhelming, and the chief difference between the two outings — aside from the 20-minute shorter runtime of the latest; an hour is still more than enough time for Insider to get their point across — is that Event Horizon is much more structured than was its predecessor. The late 2013 release arrives some eight years after Insider‘s last studio album, 2005’s Simple Water Drops, so even with Vibrations from the Tapes as a stopgap or perhaps a signal of revitalized activity, there’s been plenty of opportunity for creative growth within the band. Interestingly, what we seem to find across these eight mostly-extended cuts is that exact growth in progress. Memorable riffs pervade songs like the opener “Escape Velocity,” “Gravitational Mass” and the six-movement “Expansion of the Universe,” but chiefly, Event Horizon presents an image of the trio in flux as they move toward a songwriting process from jammier past efforts — granted Vibrations from the Tapes was recorded earlier, but until Event Horizon it was still their latest material — thus further solidifying their instrumental approach.
Ultimately, it’s a very particular moment captured on Event Horizon, because while Insider have moved past (at least for the time being, one never knows what future albums will bring) presenting their output in its rawest form — i.e., the jams — neither have they completely moved from that ethic to a wholly structured approach. Event Horizon resides, then, at the borderline between the two mindsets, and presents Insider, comprised of guitarist/keyboardist Marco Ranalli, bassist Piero Ranalli and drummer Stefano Di Rito with the very choice that the title seems to self-consciously hint toward: Do they continue on this path toward verse/chorus songwriting, or do they pull back into the more spontaneous atmospheres of their prior work. Their earliest albums, 1996’s Insider and 1998’s Land of Crystals, were more straightforward stylistically, it’s worth noting (also reportedly more metal), so maybe a shift away from jamming would be bringing Insider full-circle. If they could do so in a manner that further pushed their sound creatively as Event Horizon seems to do, with Marco adding progressive and psychedelic depth to the songs via sundry analog and digital synth and also enhancing the emotional scope — also allowing listeners a moment to breathe/become further hypnotized in the three-minute title-track that precedes “Expansion of the Universe” — they might be all the better for it. One imagines, however, that doing so would remove some of the opportunity for proggy exploration upon which “Black Hole” and “Magnetic Field Lines” seem only too ready to capitalize, making the songs shorter by and large. Tradeoffs in everything, I suppose.
There is a third option. Insider could stagnate and keep to the same approach they have on Event Horizon, offering space-themed instrumentals birthed and developed from fluid, progressive and heavy jams, but there’s nothing about the spread these tracks create to make me think they’re finished developing, either in looking at their past albums or even the small sample of Vibrations from the Tapes into these tracks. If anything, Event Horizon comes across like a step in a progression more than an entity unto itself, like the second piece of a trilogy, leading toward whatever it might be that’s coming next. Perhaps that doesn’t say much for the standalone value of “Jet” or “Escape Velocity” or closer “White Hole,” which mounts a fluid build to cap the record’s impressive run, so let me point out that if Event Horizon has any issue with its execution, it’s not a lack of substance. Some might find that the hypnotic affect of Insider‘s instrumental style takes away from the individual impact of the tracks. I’m not sure I could argue against that point, but Event Horizon doesn’t seem to be trying to foster hit singles. It’s a thematic work if not a narrative concept album, and should be approached as such, even if it’s easy to hear future choruses being formed in the nebulae of some of these cuts. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if their next album pushed deeper into a traditional songwriting form — a major step would be adding vocals to the mix, but it doesn’t seem like an outlandish idea based on parts present here — but don’t let that stand as an implication that Event Horizon lacks quality on its own level, because it offers thorough and enticing fascinations to match its gravity-minded allure.
