Only a few seconds of “On the Brink,” the brief introductory track on Yugen’s third AltrOck label release, Iridule, are needed to realize that this album will likely make the band’s preceding outing, Uova Fatali: Yugen Plays Leddi, seem like accompaniment to a leisurely afternoon in an Italian outdoor café. Uova Fatali’s Euro-folk aspects, organic instrumentation, and comparatively “live” feel leavened Yugen’s thornier avant-prog elements heard on the group’s nonetheless impressive debut, Labirinto d’Acqua. Some might see Iridule as Labirinto d’Acqua redux, but that would oversimplify, because the album manages the difficult task of moving backwards and forward simultaneously. “On the Brink” announces that something truly uncompromising is in store, with dissonant high-pitched long tones of indeterminate origin drawn out across a deep and ponderous metal-ish backing, which ends so abruptly that Iridule is instantly revealed as a creature of the studio; and in fact, the liners indicate that the recording took six months to complete, from January to June 2010 “somewhere in Northern Italy.” The next track, “The Scuttle of the Past Out of the Cupboards” (with Guy Segers on bass), has enough changeups crammed into its six and a half minutes -- fusion guitar lines, Zappa-ish tuned percussion, brief sax-driven jazzy snippets, atmospheric ambient interludes, proggy Mellotron -- that one could easily imagine an entire six months of studio time devoted to getting this single track just right. Imagine Zappa or early Henry Cow married to aspects of John Zorn’s ‘80s jump-cut aesthetic -- it’s a pastiche but flabbergasting all the same. And while some later tracks float calmly (recalling the ambient-leaning side project Kurai) and others (e.g., “Overmurmer”) display actual -- although fractured -- grooves, the complex, ever-changing arrangements and widely varied instrumentation are guaranteed to keep your head spinning.

1		On the Brink
2		The Scuttle of the Past Out of the Cupboards
3		Iridule
4		Overmurmur
5		Scribbled
6		Becchime
7		Ice
8		Ganascia
9		Thaw
10		Serial(ist) Killer
11		Cloudscape