There's a particular kind of musical alchemy that happens when a project is less concerned with coherence than with curiosity, and Not Normal After Music by Rafael Pacha With The Friends Of (Con)fusion is a fine example of exactly that. As the title rather pointedly suggests, this is not an album interested in behaving itself. From the outset, Pacha positions the listener somewhere between a late-night jam session and a carefully orchestrated act of controlled disintegration. The music leans heavily into the elastic possibilities of progressive fusion, but rather than the polished virtuosity often associated with the genre, there's a deliberate looseness here a sense that the players are feeling their way through shifting terrain in real time. It makes for a listening experience that is as unpredictable as it is absorbing. The "Friends Of (Con)fusion" concept proves more than just a clever bit of wordplay. The rotating cast of collaborators, including Jan-Olaf Strandberg (Fretted & Fretless Basses), Alessandro De Benedetti (Keyboards, Grand Piano, Vocals), Kimmo P๖rsti (Drums & Percussion), Risto Salmi (Soprano & Tenor Sax) and others, bring a wide palette of textures and approaches, from jazz-inflected harmonic detours to bursts of avant-prog angularity. At times, passages seem to teeter on the brink of collapse before snapping back into a groove, suggesting an underlying compositional intelligence that keeps the whole enterprise from drifting too far into abstraction. What's particularly striking is how the album balances its more chaotic impulses with moments of surprising restraint. Amid the fractured rhythms and harmonic sidesteps, there are passages of genuine atmosphere brief windows where melody and mood take precedence over technical display. These sections don't so much ground the record as provide contrast, making the more wayward excursions feel purposeful rather than indulgent. Production-wise, the album opts for clarity over gloss. There's a slightly raw, almost tactile quality to the sound that suits the material well. You can hear the edges the spaces between instruments, the small imperfections and it adds to the sense that this is music being discovered rather than merely executed. In terms of influences, you can almost hear Frank Zappa lurking in the wings not so much in direct quotation, but in the album's willingness to embrace absurdity, abrupt shifts, and a certain dry musical wit. There are also shades of Soft Machine in the way jazz phrasing is threaded through a progressive framework, alongside the ghost of King Crimson in the more angular, rhythmically unsettled passages. Yet what prevents the album from feeling derivative is how loosely these touchstones are worn; Pacha and his collaborators treat influence as a springboard rather than a template, resulting in something that feels collaged rather than constructed. If there's a caveat, it's that Not Normal After Music demands a certain level of engagement. This isn't background listening; it's an album that asks you to follow it down its various rabbit holes, some of which are more rewarding than others. But for those willing to invest the time, there's a quiet coherence that emerges from the apparent disorder. In the end, this is less a collection of songs than a document of interaction a musical conversation that embraces risk over resolution. It may not always land where you expect, or even where you might hope, but that's very much the point. In a genre that can sometimes feel overly codified, Rafael Pacha and his circle of co-conspirators offer something refreshingly untamed: music that lives, breathes, and occasionally misbehaves. ***+ David Carswell Where to buy? |
