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Review & Full Album Stream: Mouth, Floating

mouth floating

[Click play above to stream Floating by Mouth in its entirety. Album is out March 23 on Tonzonen Records and available to preorder here.]

Looking at the cover art, would it be a shock to learn that Mouth‘s third album and Tonzonen Records debut, Floating, is both colorful and self-aware? Hopefully not. The Cologne, Germany-based progressive rock trio — Chris Koller on vocals, guitars, keys and production, Gerald Kirsch on bass, Nick Mavridis on dums and more keys — have put together Floating on a quick turnaround from their 2017 sophomore outing, Vortex (review here), and with the soft release of Live ’71 (review here) between the two studio outings, it seems the three-piece have committed themselves at least for the time being to a prolific rate of output.

Nothing to complain about there. It’s always more difficult to chart a band’s growth with a short time split from one record to the next, but Mouth have made that process relatively simple by pushing their sound backward in time. One imagines that if utterly manageable eight-song/34-minute Floating were to receive a companion live offering like Vortex before it, it might be Live ’69 instead of Live ’71, and sound-wise that’s a marked difference. Where the prior album was lush in its melodies, patient and ready at a moment’s notice to veer into post-King Crimson serenities — nothing against that whatsoever — Floating is by and large more psychedelically influenced; proto-progressive instead of classically progressive. And even though it picks up right where Vortex left off, with the intro “Floating (Reprise)” reviving — or, you know, reprising — the capstone of the album prior, which was the 16-minute, sitar-laced “Epilogue,” it’s telling that here it features for less than three minutes before Mouth move onto the even-less patient “Madbeth.”

An outlier for sure, “Madbeth” almost reminds of something ’90s weirdos Ween would come up with, but even in that it remains decidedly progressive in its catchy, bizarre shuffle and sneering vocals. The subsequent organ-say-hello-to-wah drifter “Homagotago” — a Can reference? — comes across like an exploratory jam led by its layered in guitar solo, but clearly there’s a trajectory being followed. The mix of Floating‘s longest track (at nine minutes) is given depth through the organ and other backing synth, and bass and drums seem to hold together a progression that otherwise would simply melt into lysergic goo.

Already in the first three tracks, Mouth have given three distinctly different vibes, but fortunately for anyone who might take the heady but not unwelcoming album on, their command over their sound is steady no matter where they head. Completely instrumental, “Homagotago” is given a bit of funk bounce as it crossed its midpoint, but it doesn’t last, and instead the three-piece push through something of an understated crescendo and finish with the keys and synth sort of drifting off into the unknown. What I’ll assume is the side A closer, “Reversed” is more grounded in a proto-prog hook with layers of swirl backing its vibe-heavy naturalism and blend of acoustic and electric guitars, keys melded in with a tambourine and subtle, relaxed boogie. There’s something garage-style about Floating‘s affect overall, but it’s hard to pinpoint that in moments perhaps outside the pre-punk rhythm-making of “Madbeth” or perhaps “Distance” still to come, but it might just be in the record’s more concise presentation.

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Granted, not everything on Vortex was 16 minutes long, but even as side B starts out with the instrumental “Sunrise,” its five-minute stretch seems to be efficiently-enough constructed to make its atmospheric statement without delving overly into self-indulgence or leaving the listener behind on its molten psychedelic journey into far-out far out reaches. Again, Koller‘s guitar is the leading element, but Mavridis‘ drums — dry in their production in a classic heavy rock fashion — are no less essential than the organ that fleshes out the overarching sense of melody. Side B moves from “Sunrise” to closer “Sunset,” and in between, the shorter “Distance” (3:05) and “O.T.B. Field” (2:55) work respectively to add to the scope of Floating overall and revive its sense of movement ahead of “Sunset,” which follows.

“Distance” is of particular note, as it essentially breaks in hal just before about 90 seconds in, leaving its verse/chorus approach behind in favor of peaceful drone and acoustic interplay that’s drifting and immersive in kind until it cuts short into the boogie of “O.T.B. Field,” which like “Madbeth” before it feels wilful in its weirdness and more geared toward catchiness than some of the other material surrounding — “Distance” before it and “Sunset” after, for example. The finale of Floating begins, suitably enough, with organ and guitar in back and forth conversation, and is soon enough backed by a funky drum beat similar to but perhaps not exactly the same as that which featured on “Sunrise.” At just under five minutes long, it builds in tempo and volume over its constant organ line until it just kind of comes apart and the drums announce its finish, cutting everything off cold.

The bookends on side B give Floating‘s second half the impression of being an album unto itself — as though the entire album were a 2LP condensed into a single platter — but if one is listening in a linear format (CD, digital), there’s no lack of flow from front to back. As it turns out, Floating was put together over the course of three years of recording between 2012 and 2015, so it’s hard to say what it stands for in terms of the overarching growth of the band, but Mouth have used these manifestations of disparate songwriting impulses to conjure a sense of wholeness and realization that makes Floating work well as a singular entity.

Does that mean they’ll have another record out in 2019? I have no idea whatsoever, but if they’re as committed to momentum as they seem to be — which is particularly fascinating given that they were founded in 2000, didn’t release their first album until 2009 and didn’t follow that up until last year — then anything’s possible and they make it fun to imagine where they might take their sound next, forward or backward in time, or perhaps out of it entirely.

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