 Prog
rock takes many forms. MANY forms. Any category that can somehow
include Genesis AND Univers Zero is going to have some pretty broad
parameters. Oddly, it's usually not too difficult to determine what
fits into "prog" and what doesn't. There's certainly a large degree of
technical proficiency, but that's really the only objective criteria
that comes to mind that would apply to everything that feels
appropriate to put in the genre.
The Cosmos Factory deal with this broad palate by being insane. Not in
the dysfunctional sense (so far as I know,) but by being absolutely all
over the place, making so many stylistic leaps, jumps, cross overs and
shifts that prog is really the only label that could contain them when
this came out in 1975.
The first song alone, "Sunday's Happening," is the kind of thing people
have to break out the thesaurus for, if they want to capture what's
going on in its extraordinarily busy four minutes. Wah-wah pedal,
cheesy organ, Zappa-esque weird noises all over a rhythm not far
removed from what Bruce Springsteen would cop for "Fire" a few years
later. That takes us to "Daydream," a fairly straightforward keyboard
prog number that comes to a screeching halt so someone can whisper the
title in your ear. In classic 70s mode, this whisper is heavily
processed, pans across the stereo field, and sounds like some long
haired guy trying to sell you on the idea of a mental journey. Which,
as per the title of the album, is exactly what he's doing.
It goes on like this, hopping around from idea to idea, never
staying anywhere for very long. It's impressive to see how many things
they can squeeze into one song, and how many of these mutant songs they
can some up with in one album. Even so, when things take a bit of a
breather (with "Wind In The Morning (A Trip,)") that song's blissed out
"Maggot Brain" on happy pills vibe is a welcome respite from the cut
and paste mentality of the rest of the album. The pluses outweigh the
minuses, overall, and there's something to be said about a record that
must be played multiple times before the listener can even begin to
grasp what kind of emotional arc the band is attempting. While all this
is going on, there are plenty of signifiers for fans of The Cosmos
Factory's contemporaries like PFM or New Trolls: loads of Hammond B3,
dramatic guitar, heartfelt vocals, instrumental wankery, enough wah-wah
to challenge David Gilmour on "Animals," and a final song called "The
Cosmogram."
There's yet another layer for the faithful to dissect: figuring out
what's what in the grooves. According to the liner notes, the
following were utilized: Solina, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3,
Mini-Moog, Melotron, tape effects, hitting a door, funny cat, electric
cleaner, fuzz master, talking bag, and something called a self made
symphonizer. This grab bag approach presumably had quite a bit to do
with the scattershot nature of the proceedings, and as the final song
trails out into a run out groove that sounds like a perpetually evil
Jack in the box, it's difficult to remember any generalities of what
you've just heard. Overall, "A Journey With The Cosmos Factory" does sacrifice a bit in terms of
coherence: if you're not paying close attention, it might seem like a
compilation, albeit one that has a fairly intriguing flow. It takes some patient listening before the tunes emerge.
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