Titan Stride Beyond the Wander on Sweet Dreams
When Tee Pee Records released Titan’s 2007 full-length debut, A Raining Sun of Light and Love for You and You and You, I recall being swept up in its far-ranging psychedelia, more structured than the likes of labelmates Earthless or The Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, but still of a similar blown-out, lysergic ilk. I liked it. I thought it was a good album. I listened to it for a while and put it away. Some albums you go back to, some you don’t. A Raining Sun of Light and Love for You and You and You managed to leave an impression, but it’s not something I put on regularly once I was done reviewing it. It’s still on my shelf, and I know it’s a cool album, but staying power wasn’t one of its great assets.
In a way, I feel the same about Titan’s more economically-titled sophomore outing, Sweet Dreams. Now signed to Relapse, the Brooklyn outfit emit five mostly-extended, mostly-instrumental cuts, upping the level of prog and losing some of the acoustic/jam feel of the first album. They do well at it, and the addition of bassist Steve Moore, also known for his work as half the synthy Relapse prog duo Zombi, has definitely affected Titan’s sound, twisting the embellishments on Sweet Dreams toward the more technically intricate and the seemingly cerebral. When all is said and done, though, I’m not honestly convinced I’m going to come back to Sweet Dreams any more than I went back to A Raining Sun of Light and Love for You and You and You. And that’s not even necessarily a statement about the quality of the album or of the four-piece’s performances therein, it’s just a fact that seemed worth mentioning.
Titan’s growth is palpable immediately from the opening of its kickoff title-track, which starts with a surprisingly heavy riff from guitarist Josh Anzano, offering a little adrenaline in the beginning that Sweet Dreams returns to later in its progression. The track evolves and twists through its 7:47 runtime, always keeping a mind of where it’s been and where it’s going. Drummer Dave Liebowitz contributes a few clever fills and has a good sense of where it’s appropriate to dial it back and let Anzano take the lead, backed by washes from Kris D’Agostino’s synths. That’s more or less the course the rest of Sweet Dreams takes, though as a whole Titan shift the direction of their flourishes enough on each track so as to let them maintain an individual edge while also acting as part of the whole, shorter second piece “Synthasaurs” having charm in more than just its title, which one imagines to be a reference to the analog and/or vintage equipment used to compose the song itself. I like this side of Titan; a kind of space-minded sub-prog, not unlike the cinematic feel Zombi brought to their last album, Spirit Animal. It’s shorter by more than half of the surrounding four tracks, but it nonetheless establishes a firm ground for Titan build on in the future. The future, incidentally, also being where the song sounds like it comes from.
“Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander,” the advance track that made an appearance on The Obelisk and elsewhere, draws back into the heavy riffing from Anzano that started the album, and is the only cut on Sweet Dreams to feature vocals. It’s probably also got Moore’s most standout performance on bass, as he matches up with Liebowitz’s toms to set the rhythmic foundation of the verse before Anzano and D’Agostino come back in after the halfway point. It’s a wonder Titan don’t have more vocals, as these fit the music well and Sweet Dreams works all the more with “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander” as its centerpiece, Anzano’s raucous soloing having more to play off of than just the instruments accompanying. But maybe some of the novelty would be lost if there was singing on each track, making what works so well here sound ultimately formulaic. I don’t know.
What’s clear by the end of “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander” is that one of Sweet Dreams’ most marked achievements is its flow. The album isn’t structured entirely as one long track, there are pauses between songs, but the movement from one to the next is incredibly smooth. Even as the more angular “Highlands of Orick” takes hold in a surprising jolt of stylistic shift from the preceding lushness, I can’t help but feel that the transition was as well done as it possibly could have been. “Highlands of Orick” abandons some of the spaced-out feel of its predecessor in favor of a more modern, earthly, progressive sound. Anzano is out front with multiple layers of soloing, and there’s a groove to the song, but its mathier approach stands out from the rest of Sweet Dreams, Liebowitz nonetheless having no trouble grounding it as it gives way to 11-minute closer “Maximum Soberdrive.” It’s here that the jam has really taken hold and it’s easiest to get lost in what Titan are doing musically, but that’s not to say the band are losing themselves in freakout improv; there’s still a structure in place. It may be linear, but the depth of unison in the playing of Anzano and D’Agostino and Moore doesn’t just happen. These songs have been worked on, fleshed out, seriously considered.
I may or may not return to it, but as “Maximum Soberdrive” draws Sweet Dreams to its close, Titan’s creative breadth proves nonetheless impressive. At once cinematic and ambient and engaging and cerebral on a musical level, the band strike a balance between two different types of sonic nerding, and though they’re by no means the only ones to “go prog” in the last couple years, the direction in which they’re headed feels limitless in terms of potential avenues for exploration. Provided they keep this lineup, Anzano, D’Agostino, Moore and Liebowitz could easily grow into one of Brooklyn’s finest psychedelic acts. Or maybe they’ll become something else entirely. In any case, though it probably won’t be in my constant rotation, Sweet Dreams leaves me with the feeling that the best is yet to come from Titan, and is definitely worth the time it takes to listen.
Tags: Brooklyn, New York, New York City, Relapse, Titan
