Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are those who shy away from chaos, the never ending pandemonium that resides in the mind and in the cosmos and denies it breathing room. Yet from out of natural anarchy comes order; it might not be the one suits the straight jacketed and stiff rigid back but the turmoil it beings is beautiful and intelligent. Chaos as a tool can be tranquil and in O.R.k’s collaborative album Inflamed Rides, chaos is but a gateway to the intense riches that lay beyond first dreamed imagination.
The talent that lays at the heart of the band and which has produced such unregulated upheaval is almost too true to comprehend but it upon reading it is no wonder that the music plays as if the only sanity left in the world lives in the conductor who brings reason and structure to the orchestra at Bedlam. Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari, Carmelo Pipitone, Pat Mastelotto and Colin Edwin have weaved something from out of the elemental soup, something not just intriguing but full of muscle, so much so it flexes its biceps at a Mr. Universe competition and the judges swoon at the thought.
O.R.k display an almost embarrassment of resources in the presentation of the album, not least in the genuine appreciated skill that comes through but also in the way it is verging on bring several genres to the fore at the same time. Elements of the Progressive fuse tightly with the trip defining psychedelia, an imposing intuitive feel for Rock and the illumination of the outrageous classic.
To be hypnotised by songs such as Pyre, Bed of Stones, the excellent Funfair and the crafty opener of Jelly fish, the normality of music service is taken for a long ride into the deserted desert, given enough water to survive and left spitting on its own complacency as the wheel spin generated dust bids it Bon Voyage and farewell.
From out of the unfathomable chaos comes beauty and O.R.k’s Inflamed Rides is such beauty, it’s enough to make your head swim with deliberate ease; rewarding and spacious, chaos is sometimes worth the risk.
Ian D. Hall