The latest release of Australian artist Minorarc, solo project of veteran musician Ivan Bullock, is the eight track album entitled Inclusions. The album spans a variety of genres and influences, but progressive rock and progressive metal take the lead. The instrumental album is rich and dense and has a lot to say without a single word or lyric uttered. Let’s dive deep into this record and find out what makes it so special.
So the first track is entitled A Drizzle’s Vagrant I, and you can already tell this album is an epic journey from the artwork to the track’s name which make you feel like you’re traveling through the fabric of space and time as you listen to the orchestration and suspenseful piano arrangements that Bullock has carefully tailored. It’s pretty rare for an artist to conduct such feelings without vocals or lyrics but so far, this album nails it. The following track, Seven Times Burnt, begins with a similarly somber intro full of orchestral lines and clean guitars before quickly giving away Djenty palm muted riffs with an odd time signature. This piece seamlessly flows from one segment to the other thanks to the clean guitar tones working with the orchestration and the ambient sounds, which are regularly intercepted by the distorted guitars making them shine whenever they’re present, and making them an antagonist character to the clean parts. The amount of dark sounds and melodies used in this piece makes you appreciate and feel the brighter ones so strongly, and vice versa.
The following track, Meet The Blade, begins with a catastrophic orchestral line that the guitars sortly pick up and start playing with a slight variation. It’s a very groovy track that will get you headbanging, but still somehow bedazzle you, thanks to the soft piano lines that harmonize with the groovy guitars. It seems like Bullock is a master of interlocking light and darkness and using opposing elements to strengthen the emotions he wants to tell. After that we have another long track, entitled Three Times, and it brings yet another feeling to the table. The tapping style in which Bullock plays his clean guitars will take you back to the progressive rock days of the 70s and 80s, except it’s accompanied by his orchestrations and ambient sounds to keep the ominous sound that makes his music authentic and keeps the track coherent with the rest of the album. Near the end of the album we hear what a lot of people in the metal world call the “chainsaw effect” or “chainsaw guitar”, which alludes to how crunchy and groovy the guitars are distorted, and these guitars once again blur the lines between prog rock and prog metal in beautiful way that just gives you absolute goosebumps while listening. Bleeding Facet is a relatively shorter track that swings like a pendulum from richly orchestrated sections to other stripped down ones with the guitar and drums outshining every other element. This is once again a fusion kind of track because of how it will remind some listeners of dream theater and some others of rush or king crimson. It seems like Mr Ivan Bullock knows no genre definitions or boundaries, and we’re so lucky he doesn’t.
The following track, Triclinic, begins as a mid tempo and soft number before it picks up pace and has some truly odd arrangements in its middle section. It’s like listening to two (or more) different artists playing a variation of the same musical direction and ideas. The chuggy and heavy guitars made me bang my head and move around joyfully, but what makes this album stand out for me is the complexity of the composition and the amazing techniques Bullock uses on his guitar. It’s amazing to find an album that fuses so many areas of music while making the most out of them, and it’s all due to mastermind Ivan Bullock pouring his heart out and making the record focus on its balanced sound and emotional weight rather than overwhelming the listener with advanced music theory they can’t comprehend like some other prog bands do. I thought the album would end with the piano epilogue, A Drizzle’s Vagrant II, but there was another wonderful track still waiting for me. The eighth and final track, Blue Cold Mess, adds a new instrument that we haven’t heard before, and that’s the classical guitar…believe me when I tell you there’s no instrument or technique that Bullock doesn’t have a way of including in his amazing musical fingerprint and unique style. With that track’s last few chuggs and riffs, this magnum opus record sadly comes to an end, and my only complaint is that this marvelous journey ended way too soon.
