Australian musician Cameron Pikó is back with his third album under the Montresor project name. Autopoiesis is his first album in nearly ten years, as his previous release Entelechy was released in 2015. While his earlier work drew more from prog rock, Autopoiesis is both a departure for the artist as well as a stylistic expansion. Here Montresor finds his influence in elements of jazz fusion, and the songs have more in common with names like Miles Davis than King Crimson. There’s also a great deal of classical influences here with the inclusion of instruments like the clarinet and bassoon creating a sound that is pretty much unlike anything else being made today.
This departure is immediately apparent from the first track “Vanishing Fog” with its odd time signature, circling harpsichord arpeggio, and a guitar that functions more like it’s part of an orchestral ensemble than a rock band. The album destroys any barrier between the avant garde classical and experimental post rock realms, and exists in a fascinating limbo state of its own creation. On other tracks such as “Farmland” you can spot the footprints of predecessors like Frank Zappa, but listening to Autopoiesis is a wonderfully strange experience where you feel like you’re floating in space, completely untethered from any and all genre distinctions.
