Gavin Harrison – ‘Cheating The Polygraph’ [Review]

Prog is, at times, a strangely divided world. On one side are the true progressives, fiercely determined to push music forward into the future. On the other side stand the stuck-in-the-mud individuals whose primary objective is to cling tenaciously to the ways of the past.

Cheating the Polygraph is guaranteed to ruffle the latter camp’s feathers. A collection of Porcupine Tree songs reworked using big-band instrumentation and a modern-minded approach to arrangement, calling this album quirky would be something of an understatement.

Some are likely to struggle to get past the superficial level of instrumentation, timbre, and tone – but beneath it can be felt the pounding pulse of pure creativity. On Cheating the Polygraph, timeless prog-rock tunes such as The Sound of Muzak, Heartattack in a Layby, Futile, and this long-player’s title track are all given superficially jazzy makeovers that actually owe as much to the influence of Frank Zappa as they do to less batshit-crazy genius bandleaders of decades past.

For me, the band-falling-down-a-spiral-staircase groove of The Pills I’m Taking is a definite highlight – but that does nothing to take away from the masterful musicianship on display throughout every last microsecond of Cheating the Polygraph‘s running time. This eight-track album took five years to make, and the labours and love that have been poured into its creation are as tangible as they could possibly be when communicated through ones, zeroes, and soundwaves. Unsurprisingly flawless, but also unexpectedly addictive and moreish.

TMMP RATING: 95%

Links

Cheating the Polygraph is set to drop via Kscope on April 13th.

Gavin Harrison official website.

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Posted on 05 March 2015