imp - Moon Coastal Maine

Science Fiction Rock and Roll from the depths of West Yorkshire via the Altered States of Philophobia, imp's (always lower case) Moon Coastal Maine is a really bold statement for a debut album with its minute-or-so long ambient pieces scattered throughout. Maybe imp have made their second difficult album and released it first? There is, after all, a bunch of music already recorded that hasn't made it onto Moon Coastal Maine (when first mooted, the album was going to be a 70 minute behemoth). What we have here is a selection of songs that could fit onto two sides of an LP, as if the band doesn't want to outstay its welcome.

There are passages, largely instrumental, that could well be deemed as incidental music, but the album as a whole just wouldn't hang together properly if they were mere interludes. These pieces are integral to the flow of Moon Coastal Maine. It's almost as if the album is sequenced to allow your mind to recover from the frazzling that occurs when immersed in tracks such as 'Better Living Through Chemistry' or 'Wild China': the soothing balm of woozy synthesisers and treated voices before you're plunged back into the uneasy rhythms of what the men of imp may refer to as their 'regular rock' mode. Thing is, there is nothing regular about how these songs unfurl. The drums and bass are akin to the aural equivalent of an Escher drawing.

If you have seen imp play live, you'll know that it's not a ponderous Math Rock thing. Neither is it Progressive, but there is a smidgen of both, but it's mostly in the genes and not in the attitude in which it's presented. imp are not po-faced plodders. Drummer Aiden is a good barometer of what the live imp experience is. Occasionally levitating from the drumstool as the music peaks, a beatific smile beneath the beard. Both on record and in the flesh, the band are capable of moments of mind-bending wonder. Howdle's guitar sometimes sounds more like a keyboard than keys man Riggs's Farfisa-like sound. There's a guitar motif somewhere in this melee ('Call of the Wild') that echoes Robert Fripp's input on Bowie's Scary Monsters album. In fact, how Howdle manages to sound like Fripp and Adrian Belew within the same song is something to be admired (see 'Zona de Bahnos' and 'Loyola'). In other sections, there are huge Stylophone-like portamento sounds as Howdle's bandmates' music rises and falls. 'Salad Days' puts me in mind of 'Unconsciously Screaming' era Flaming Lips; there is a Magazine-like bass sound on 'Die!' and 'Airwaves' is the four to the floor thrash that Mercury Rev couldn't quite manage to achieve.

Somehow, all of the above influences - real or percived, who knows? - go into the imp mix and come out the other side sounding super-fresh. Moon Coastal Maine doesn't outstay its welcome. Now how about the Deluxe Edition with all the unreleased music?