Times change, sure! There are some people who have the nerve to say that rock music isn’t what it once was. They tell it to their friends, write blog posts, and some of the crustiest of them all turn their ideas into videos watched by millions.
It all makes for good headlines. But they’re wrong. It’s not the music that’s not of equal value. It’s very likely that the audiences aren’t nearly as good. It’s they who have to check their phone every two damn minutes, thus stopping any sort of magic from occurring when you watch a live show or listen to an album.
The great rock audiences of the past were comprised of people voluntarily giving themselves up for a session of hypnosis at the hands of the artist. These are the kinds of audiences that Mondrian, the stage moniker of Buenos Aires rock composer and producer Matias Jimenez, deserves.
On his first EP, “2020 – 2025,” which collects songs from this period, Mondrian seeks to channel the mesmerising qualities of old Krautrock, as well as the enthusiasm of modern electric guitar music.
There’s plenty to appreciate here, but the work is hermetic enough to only please those willing to devote their focus to it. Take, for example, the opening track, “A1,” where Mondrian works with chopped-up and reassembled lines upon lines of overdriven lead guitar, then stops for a Baroque-style organ interlude before pushing everything toward an almost garage-rock-style crescendo.
It’s all fun and pretty rocking, too. But it requires some effort if you plan on falling in love with it. This is also the case with “B1” a song where the lead guitar parts and the choice of notes bring to mind the virtuoso guitars of the 1980s.
Mondrian is also the work of a single artist, one who writes, records, produces, and, most importantly, makes all of the choices. On “C1,” a soundtrack to a flight through a cloudless sky, or the moodier “D1,” it’s easy to appreciate the fact that this is the result of one single vision.
Where does it all leave us? As you listen to “E1,” the closing track with its fuzzed-out, sparse rhythm guitar parts and its gentle melodies, you may well find out that time has passed, that by giving your attention over to the music, you’ve found more parts of yourself than you didn’t realise were gone. Yeah, that’s the kind of audience that Mondrian deserves.
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