(2019) Billy Meier - Sounds from Erra
Review:
The Oslo-based quintet Billy Meier enlivens its live presentation by donning disco ball helmets and gold pants and placing inflatable green aliens on stage. Consistent with such irreverence, Devo and The Residents have been cited as points of comparison, yet one also could add Radio Gnome Invisible-era Gong (its early-‘70s albums Flying Teapot and Angel’s Egg, specifically) and 17 Pygmies (with its recent Celestina and Isabel cycles) to that short-list. Certainly all share with the space-rock outfit an appetite for weirdness, yet while a predilection for myth-building is common to all five, each group is totally serious about crafting quality music to flesh out its whimsical story-lines. Billy Meier, similar to its brethren, straddles multiple stylistic zones in its productions, including jazz, folk, pop, psychedelia, and prog. The band’s Øra Fonogram debut, which recounts a journey from Earth to planet Erra and back, offers a quasi-anthropological portrait of Erra, with details relating to its creatures and flora and fauna part of the itinerary. During the visit, we encounter extraterrestrials called the Plejaren and a female character named Semjase and are dazzled by Erra’s futuristic cities and magical forests (the band named itself, incidentally, after Swiss citizen Eduard Albert “Billy” Meier, who claims to have visited the planet and had contact with extraterrestrial beings). For added clarity, narrative commentary is provided by Emily C. Brannigan, whose soothing voice punctuates the thirteen-track suite fashioned by Hans Kjorstad (violin), Sander Eriksen Nordahl (guitar), Henriette Eilertsen (flutes, synthesizer), Martin Morland (bass), and Ivar Myrset Asheim (drums, sample pad). One of the things that gives the band distinguishing character is its violin-flute combination, as illustrated by the relaxing drift of the scene-setting “Leaving Planet Earth,” its entrancing design immediately offset by the energized “Contact”; with finger-picked guitar patterns draped across a motorik Afro-funk groove, the tune could pass for a vocal-less Remain in Light outtake or Fela mini-jam. Billy Meier’s prog side moves to the fore in “Semjase’s Cry (To Her Lost Lover Billy)” when unison flute-and-violin figures appear alongside a slow-motion bass-and-drums caravan, the whole accented by Nordahl’s tremolo strums and Eilertsen’s synth warble. Brannigan turns botanist for “A Planet of Plants,” which, with its bloops, blips, and percussive noises, evokes the image of a natural paradise teeming with unusual life-forms. A similar kind of wonderment infuses “Magical Mystery Pond,” with the narrator again noting vivid details such as unicorns emerging for a drink. The strangeness of the alien creatures is conveyed by the funky prog-rock of “Plejarens by the River,” the tune also a vehicle for a frenetic jazz-tinged solo by Kjorstad and slide playing by Nordahl. Each track, in short, highlights a slightly different side of the band, with each performance demonstrating its ability to handle any style it’s inclined to tackle. Sounds From Erra is the kind of release where it’s not uncommon for a synth-heavy sci-fi opus (“Double Full Moon”) to appear next to a weird, percussion-sprinkled improv (“Luminescent Squirrels”) or breezy pop-jazz reverie (“Billy’s Night Out”). It’s a trip, in other words, literally and figuratively.
Tracklist:
01 - Leaving Planet Earth
02 - Contact
03 - Semjase's Cry (To Her Lost Lover Billy)
04 - Beamship View
05 - A Planet of Plants
06 - Plejarens By the River
07 - Space Train
08 - Plejarens in the Forest
09 - Magical Mystery Pond
10 - Billy's Night Out
11 - Luminescent Squirrels
12 - Double Full Moon
13 - Leaving Planet Erra
Summary:
Country: Norway
Genre: experimental, jazz, psychedelic rock
Media Report:
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Bit rate: ~ 500-856 Kbps
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
