image courtesy of Bob Lord

Album Review of Bob Lord: The Six Observables

Experimental progressive rock music is some of the hardest to decide to write about. It’s rarely apparent from a first listen how the listening experience will evolve over multiple trips through the album, whether the music will reveal nuances upon repeated listens, whether it will embed itself into the brain as a familiar friend over time, or if the music will devolve into gimmicky quirkiness after several runthroughs. In the case of Bob Lord‘s The Six Observables, I had more than just his accolades to go by; past personal experience was also on my side. I’ve previously reviewed two of Bob’s band Dreadnaught’s albums and one of his solo releases, so I expected to grow increasingly fond of The Six Observables over the course of repeated spins. I suppose you can never be certain, but in this case, my presumption was correct.

The album itself is primarily a collection of mostly-brief soundscapes. Or, perhaps, spacescapes. The album consists of short tracks of less intense music using a location and date naming convention, suggesting encounters at various times and places, with each short track being followed by a longer instrumental performance. Stylistically, the music suggests space encounters, and Bob’s comments accompanying the album’s release, noted in this blog post on his website, reveal the album content to be UFO-related.

Among the short cuts, you get some Schroeder-esque light piano on “USS Nimitz Tic-Tac Encounter – 2004.” “Miracle of the Sun at Fatima – 1917” sounds a bit like a music box. “Black Traingle From the Atlantic – 2019” is really just a long buzz with beeps. “Betty & Barney Hill Through Franconia Notch – 1961” sounds like the occasional jangle of piano keys you’d expect to hear from a jazz pianist between songs. And the album-closing short track, “The Incident At Exeter – 1965” – the longest of the short entries at 1:21 – sets the musical ship down nicely, quietly, subtly landing the ship, setting us all down for our next adventure.

As I noted, in between the short cuts are longer songs. Among the more substantial numbers, you find aggressive guitar noodling and distorted thumping, tied together with an incessant rhythm on “Instantaneous Acceleration,” a title that’s exceptionally fitting; at 1:19 it’s actually shorter than the longest short number, but both stylistically and in the scheme of the album, it clearly qualifies as a longer cut. “Low Observability,” meanwhile, is more than three minutes of a humming buzz with spacey, atmospheric beats and twoinks bubbling up throughout. (Yes, I said “twoinks.”) “Hypersonic Velocities,” probably my favorite track on the album, particularly if you’re searching for a track to be enjoyed as a standalone song, has a peppy tempo, a thumping rhythm, a playful recurring hook, and a mostly-empty-space bridge that provides a mini-reset, helping extend the listener’s interest, allowing the faster tempo to resume, carrying the song’s energy to its abrupt end. And “Biological Effects” features the sort of spacey sounds you hear throughout the disc but through a lens of psychedelic rock distortion, replete with whining guitar and thick, chunky drums. The longer numbers cover a lot of ground, all within the album’s cohesive, experimentally spacey sonic lane.

The songs are carefully ordered on this disc, as there are some cool connections between the short and long tracks. Most notably, I can’t imagine “Transmedium Travel” without the “Black Triangle From the Atlantic – 2019” lead-in, but all of the transitions are well-considered.

When all is said and one, how The Six Observables makes for an enjoyable listen is something I can’t entirely explain. It’s the curse of trying to review experimental rock music. If it’s done well, an active listener will discover an enigma wrapped in a riddle. But I can tell you that the album is very well assembled, with the space/UFO encounter theme tying everything together, while the music is sonically expressive of such a theme. And yes, The Six Observables will grow into an old friend, albeit a weird old friend, after several listens.

Previous Geoff Wilbur’s Music Blog Coverage

You can find my review of Bob Lord’s April 2021 release, Playland Arcade, via this link. You can also find my reviews of two albums from Bob’s band Dreadnaught – Hard Chargin’ and Northern Burner – at the Blog.