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Qwestion - "Y"
Qwestion 2002

This is crazy! I wasn't prepared for something like that. Two guys locked themselves in a garage and blasted a true one our jamming on bass and guitar. No vocals at all. But there's no need to have any vocals. It's the fact that when you'll be entering deeper into the world of that new bunch of fresh ideas, you'll find always something new and exciting inside them. Something is just constantly happening all the time.

Guitarist John Hall invites you to enter into dreamworld of his own riff dictionary. Unpredictable, raunchy, alive and investigating all the way. The Mask opens the riff attack right from the start. Clash between garaged and alive sound of distortion (Guitar's compressor kicks like a mule!) and computer drum machine is actually no clash at all. Both those two factors are hanging together in perfect symbiosis. A huge range of different beats and sounds are a great advantage of Qwestion's debut, a serious warning that John and Mike are not fooling around. They went for a goal on their own sincere way. And this is it. We have on one side ripping sound of constant rhythm changing drive (plus great addition of diverse cymbals) and on the other hand constant aggressive bombing of guitar and bass. This is expressed especially after intro (Walk) fades into Forest Of The Norm that catches another great conversation between exploring rhythms and guitar. Forest Of The Norm with great medieval mid section's turnover and Chaos (with some riffs driven in almighty C. Oliva's old school Savatage guitar fashion) are the most progressive songs on the record, while Freeprov delivers some jazzy stuff. Other bands would make from all those riffs, which John fires out through single song, a couple of records. Qwestion cleverly places rhythm splashes inside riff pauses to fulfill the empty sound space. Whether it was done spontaneously or not I don't know and it is not even important how it was done. That move is phenomenal.

Qwestion are also not afraid to write medieval music. Medieval track that brings a very special mood into record is a bridge between Forest Of The Norm and 3ONE2 called Muse. It is a pure bass adventure with great addition of different sound samples and effects.

Everything simply fits together. Qwestion captured their "mood for a day" on a highly convincible way.

"Y" is real refreshment on a music scene. I see Qwestion's arrival of great importance for further development of progressive rock, 'cause "Y" shows that there are still undiscovered pathways in expression of rock music. "Y" captures aliveness; it is spontaneous, unpredictable and constantly explores into the unknown. Qwestion are not afraid to choose "a new step of walking". They do what they like. And that counts. Qwestion are a new approach of certain radical affirmation. I have in mind here a birth of a new thing that might endanger status quo of majority, simply because it caries all sincerity and freedom on its own "qwestionized" way. But high determination, strong self confidence and belief always conquer all bad vibes of poor minded masses. "Yes (or Rush) of a new century, please do continue!"

Author:   Aleš



   
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