Amongst the vanguard of groups riding the crest of a largely unheralded contemporary avant-progressive tsunami, Denver's Thinking Plague stand out in bas-relief. Along with their equally breathtaking brethren in 5uu's (whose Dave Kerman & Bob Drake appear here), Thinking Plague remain utterly immune to the received prejudices that have obscured, marginalized and fostered an irrational resistance toward an idiom responsible for some of the 20th century's most significant musical achievements.
Really, I can't conceive of how much harder you'd have to bludgeon the minds of the human race before what seems perfectly clear to me becomes apparent to the population at large. Namely, that the manner in which Thinking Plague and the aforementioned 5uu's (along with a select array of contemporary Japanese units) have condensed only the most fertile (and often the most pulverizing) aspects of the last 30 years of progressive exploration into an Nth degree endgame is nothing short of awe inspiring.
On In Extremis (their first new release since 1989's seminal In this Life), these unsung geniuses have channeled the crushing fury of King Crimson, the existential angst of The Art Bears, the dense contrapuntal irregularity of Henry Cow and the pitch black angularity of Present into a disquieting concoction whose ceaseless paroxysms of unabated intensity and unnerving darkness are tempered only by "Les Etudes D' Organism"'s disturbed diversion into perversely cheerful and structurally perverse circus music.
Awash as this is in such a relentless tide of headspinning complexity, it can initially seem a bit tricky attempting to gain purchase on such wildly shifting tectonic plates of sound. However, for those who enjoy rising to the challenge posed by the aggressively odd and densely composed, the feverish surfeit of spellbinding ideas investigated here are almost without precedent.
(Originally published in Alternative Press #126, p.99, reprinted by permission)
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