Montreal avant-proggers Miriodor begin the leadoff track of Cobra Fakir, their 2013 Cuneiform album, with arpeggiated acoustic guitar from Bernard Falaise; it's a somewhat surprising turn from the electric guitar master, and "La Roue" is not the only track where he unplugs. Falaise participated in Conventum 2012 -- an André Duchesne-led trio that revisited music from the late-'70s landmark folk-prog outfit -- and it might seem that the younger guitarist brought some Duchesne/Conventum sensibility to Miriodor this time around. Yet although Falaise unplugs here and elsewhere on Cobra Fakir, he never does so for long. After all, this is Miriodor, who use every electronically produced sound in the known and unknown universe in their palette of instrumental voicings, as ably demonstrated throughout Cobra Fakir. However, the precision and crispness of Miriodor's writing and arrangements never make the album seem overloaded or merely clever. Everything has a melodic, thematic, or rhythmic purpose, or at the very least sets a mood, from unsettling and mysterious to circusy and cartoonish (sometimes simultaneously). Absolutely nothing is extraneous. That's the case as the acoustic guitar leads listeners into "La Roue" and the band is soon locked into a circular polyrhythmic groove with deep layers of contrapuntal melodic riffs and snippets from Falaise's guitars and bass, Pascal Globensky's keyboards, and who knows what else, with drummer Rémi Leclerc delivering his own imaginative percussive clank-and-smash accents. The end result is, as the album title suggests, hypnotic.

1		La Roue
2		Cobra Fakir
3		Rvb7
4		Paris-Roubaix
5		Titan
6		Un Cas Sibérien
7		Speed-Dating Sur Mars
8		Tandem
9		Maringouin
10		Space Cowboy
11		Expérience 7

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