If this is going to be Hypnos 69’s legacy, so be it. After the Belgian psychedelic progressives put out The Eclectic Measure in 2006, I didn’t imagine they’d be able to top it, since the album had such an individual balance of quirk and sonic familiarity, taking elements of earliest King Crimson and melding them with the more straightforward early ‘70s British rock style, but on their new offering, Legacy (Elektrohasch Schallplatten), the four-piece lean heavily on the prog end of their sound and push even further into the unhinged creative. The album is seven tracks that play out over a staggering 72 minutes and can be equally potent either in one extended sitting or over the course of a few sessions. Several of these songs, including opener “Requiem (for a Dying Creed),” are like an album in and of themselves.

What’s increasingly come to make Hypnos 69 unique sound-wise is the band’s use of jazz structures and classic prog instrumentation – King Crimson’s sax, Jethro Tull’s flute, everyone’s mellotron, etc. – but the band fuses these aspects of their sound together with a driving rock that’s grown over time to be the expansive, encompassing presentation of Legacy. The album starts and ends with tracks both over 17 minutes long (who doesn’t love a long opener?), and though we’re treated to a variety of sounds and styles in between, somehow Hypnos 69 manage to remain Hypnos 69 for the duration. The guitars of Steve Houtmeyers (also vocals and theremin) would seem to lead most when playing leads (rather than riffs), but the material on the album is just as likely to be driven by sax, organ, flute, drums or bass. Parts come introduced by one instrument then echoed on another, giving the songs a structured, cyclical feel. Even on “An Aerial Architect,” on which Houtmeyers’ guitar runs in tandem with Steven Marx’s saxophone à la “21st Century Schizoid Man” – at least for part of the track – the interplay between instruments is tastefully and intricately composed. Often Houtmeyers’ leads seem restrained, not trying to do too much, to just play the notes that need to be played rather than give some needlessly showy display of technicality. That comes up on later outings like the airy “Jerusalem” or the aptly-named 18:27 closer, “The Great Work.”

Basically, what Hypnos 69 are doing on Legacy is taking the style of play they introduced on The Eclectic Measure (you could argue their jazzier side showed up on 2004’s The Intrigue of Perception, or that it’s been there since their 2002 debut, Timeline Traveller, and you wouldn’t really be wrong, but it’s a question of focus more than mere elemental presence) and setting it to a completely different scale. Even the subdued “My Journey to the Stars” presents growth in its soft, memorable vocal melody, and though drummer Dave Houtmeyers “sits out” the acoustic-led “The Sad Destiny We Lament,” he finds other work on various percussion and glockenspiel while Marx fills out the track with overriding synth and bassist Tom Vanlaer thickens up the bottom end. The percussive Houtmeyers gets his revenge on the 10:48 “The Empty Hourglass,” which is as driven rhythmically as anything Hypnos 69 has ever done, the band stopping and turning on a dime under the six-string Houtmeyers’ lead, only to have Marx do a call-and-response on sax with the vocals during the verses. If it sounds like there’s a lot going on with the band, song and album, there is, but Hypnos 69 manage not to overwhelm even at their busiest, though I’ll say that it’s inevitably going to take a couple listens before the full breadth of Legacy reveals itself to the listener. In both creative scope and sheer length, it is a massive undertaking.

“The Empty Hourglass” features a sax highlight from Marx that reminds of what Queens of the Stone Age toyed with on their “I Think I Lost My Headache,” bouncing notes in that way, though here the technique is coupled with reverb guitar and of course the requisite keys. The song follows a classic jam structure to surprising cacophony, only to end on a quieter note than it began with about 10 seconds of silence that provide just the right transition into the elegant, chorus-based “Jerusalem.” Houtmeyers’ features the vocals during the softer portion of the track, stepping back as the gradual build begins to lead to payoff so that the instruments can take front position before once again rearing to make way for one last chorus. The parabolic structure of “Jerusalem” is a good example of Hypnos 69 at their best, but it would be easy for the track in most listens to be swallowed by “The Great Work,” which is nothing short of a landmark in the band’s catalog and a song on which they’d be lucky to have their Legacy based. Simply put, it’s all here: the jazz, the prog, the rock, the psych; everything that could have ever appealed to someone to make them explore Hypnos 69 is present in “The Great Work,” and it’s not like it’s all shoved in without order or unrefined. We again hear the instruments playing off each other, Houtmeyers taking a line on guitar from the flute sounds presumably from Marx (though it might be a guest musician) and providing the basic foundation from which the track seems to expand in all directions. I could go minute by minute, movement by movement, provide time stamps for changes, etc., but it would be a fruitless endeavor since it would fail to capture the impact the song as a whole has on the listener. “The Great Work” would appear to be the summation of the entire mission of Legacy, and like the album itself, it is rich, charming and utterly free. If Hypnos 69 were to have put it out on its own, as an EP, say, it would still be one of the most complete releases of 2010.

I don’t know if Hypnos 69 are going to put out another full-length, and if they do, I don’t know what form it will take, but to date, Legacy is unquestionably the band’s peak. Their melodic range is humbling, their will to explore ceaseless and their propensity for balance makes them one of the most emotionally engaging acts in the rock underground today. The work that comprises this record is, when properly approached, transcendent, and proves only more so with repeated interaction. Whatever you want to hear in it, you will hear, as though the Houtmeyerses, Marx and Vanlaer were playing in tongues, and to say it’s one of the year’s best albums is to completely sell it short. This is a work that’s going to take more than a year to fully appreciate, and as someone who’s only begun to engage it, I look forward to experiencing how it grows over time, completely confident that it will as only the best and most classic records can.

Hypnos 69 on MySpace

Elektrohasch Schallplatten

Tags: Belgium, Elektrohasch, Hypnos 69

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.