Mats/Morgan Band Live (3.5/5)

Instrumental/progressive rock, jazz, and electronic heavily under the influence of Frank Zappa. Live album of the Swedish band led by drummer Morgan Ågren and keyboardist Mats Öberg.

The funky and quick-tempo electronic music creates a feeling of travelling through a video game. The keyboard, bass and drum playing is really solid and colorful, somewhat like in Jeff Beck’s “Wired” but without his killer guitar, of course. Multiple keyboards are used to play the melodies and wow effect is often used for the bass and guitar. The tracks are rather long, some being almost twelve minutes long, and have multiple transitions. In fact, they’re a bit too long and some parts are just repetition of similar lines that drag on. The music is generally nice if you enjoy instrumental and experimental rock but some of the tracks may be a bit messy for being on air. Try 1, 4, 7. All track FCC Clean.


#1 * (11:54) Many transitions. The climax after 3:00 and 9:40 is very interesting but some parts drag on for too long. Would have been better without the 5, 6 minutes in the middle.
#2 (6:27) Multiple keyboards playing the melodies in turn.
#3 (11:41) Funky and colorful playing
#4 ** (6:46) Pieces of melodies fitting together like a jigsaw. Synth produces a sound like some kind of electric flute and builds a nice climax with intensifying bass. Avant-garde and psychedelic.
#5 (4:43) Funky but a bit messy.
#6 (0:31) Shortest track.
#7 * (6:11) Really fast-tempo. Nice guitar solo from the middle.
#8 (7:19) Funky. Many out-of-tune melodies, clean-tone guitar with wow effect pronounced.
#9 (8:33) Psychedelic. Seems to progress at random.
#10 (3:30) Synth plays in clear xylophone-tone melodies. More relaxed than other tracks.
#11 (9:03) Synth produces howling sound.