EP review: Aficionado – The Myth About Real Life

Either TDP has gained a fast reputation on the basis of my friendliness to the obscure and progressive (O RLY?), or prog is the next big thing… because hell knows I’m hearing a lot of proggy music pass through my office of late. Latest example? Albany, NY’s Aficionado, whose bio tells me they started out as an ATDI-influenced hardcore band before glomming on to the big names of seventies prog as fresh influences. This EP is the first recorded result of this alchemical marriage, and you’ve seriously never heard anything like it.

The thing to bear in mind here is that when we talk about prog in terms relevant to Aficionado, we’re not talking about Tool and Opeth; we’re talking about Focus and Yes and King Crimson. For example, title track “The Myth About Real Life” starts with bluesy hard-rawk guitar, rattly snare rhythms, weird but catchy melodies… and suddenly gains brass leads, flutes, punk-esque “2, 3, 4!” count-ins, and Farfisa organ tones? Like, WTF, y’know? But it’s a positive WTF, at least for my money. The boldness of it, the sense of high theatre and fun and don’t-care-what-you-think… that’s not something I hear often, and hearing it now reminds me how important a precursor of excitement about a band it is. Aficionado sound like a blast, and now I want to see them do this stuff live. Like, now.

And The Myth About Real Life EP just keeps delivering .“I Don’t Believe We’ve Met” is like a seventies cop-show theme-tune studio band doing The Mars Volta, with momentary background vocal interjections from moonlighting members of the voice cast of Sesame Street. It’s surreal, almost technicolour, but with a sinister subtext… think of the original Willy Wonka movie, and then imagine a missing scene where the Oompah-Loompahs are having some sort of spaghetti-western-themed post-hardcore gig in one of the back rooms. It’s nothing like that at all, of course… but once you’ve heard it you’ll see why I said it. Seriously.

Next, “Naysayers” is the Fraggle Rock Big Band doing desert rock covers in a Broadway stylee, and “The Same Original Idea” is like the climactic end to a movie musical written by Fucked Up and Les Savy Fav in an early and Ecstasy-blurred morning at the fairground cabaret tent. It’s bombastic, silly, epic, grin-inducing… and I want Aficionado to play my wedding reception. And when you consider that I don’t intend to ever marry, that’s pretty high praise. Go find out why.