Into the Estradasphere!

Album: Palace of Mirrors
Artist: Estradasphere
Genre: Avant-Garde/Genre Blender
Year: 2006
Label: The End

Estradasphere is a band that wants to do it all, and more impressively, can do it all. Originally hailing from Santa Cruz, California, Estradasphere is an ensemble of multi-instrumentalists who play music that trains you to expect the unexpected. Like their forefathers Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere loves to do crazy things with genres. What sets them apart from being a poorer version of Secret Chiefs 3 or Mr. Bungle is this: While Mr. Bungle would jump through a dozen genres in a single song and Secret Chiefs 3 keeps their hopping to a minimum and mostly between songs, Estradasphere takes on the difficult challenge of warping and combining genres, while still jumping around a lot. This is most evident on tracks like Smuggled Mutation, which begins as a Gypsy fiddle dance but quickly evolves into a Black Metal crunch while leaving the fiddle spinning wildly out of control, and The Terrible Beauty Power of Meow, which at first appears to be a mournful string symphony before transforming into a surf rock stretch that would make the Beach Boys proud.

This latest album, Palace of Mirrors, is perhaps Estradasphere’s most consistent release to date. The only other album I’ve heard by them is Buck Fever, which, while also excellent, doesn’t hold together in quite the same way that Palace does. This is because Palace of Mirrors manages to maintain the Estradasphere sound, each track sounding like it all came from the same band rather then a bunch of individual groups. As with all Estradasphere releases, despite the lack of words, there is a definite narrative here. Estradasphere’s work is often very cinematic, on Palace of Mirrors more so then ever before. Excellent examples of this come from the spy thriller romp of Colossal Risk or the credits roller and title track, Palace of Mirrors. There is something very sinister in Estradasphere’s music. This isn’t always evident, but it does come out from time to time. Buck Fever was more overtly sinister then Palace is but it’s still there, hiding, waiting to reveal itself. We get tastes of it throughout the album, but it is never more present then on the Palace of Mirrors Reprise, which amps up the suspense and terror to levels only imagined before in nightmares.

With all of this musical strength, is there anything wrong with Estradasphere? Not really. Some people may have trouble tracking the genre changes or may become annoyed when they blend together things like Gypsy Folk and Black Metal, but if you’re open minded you won’t be bothered by that. It’d be a shame, but Estradasphere could probably make it as a band that just played Death Metal, or just played Surf Rock or even Gypsy Folk. So it’s even more impressive when you hear them doing all of these things, sometimes in the space of a single song.