We’ve noted four records from Eclectic Maybe Band in 2019, 2023, and 2025 – see previous reviews for some sketched-in detail about the operations of this project led by the talented Guy Segers of Belgium (who used to play in Univers Zero). Their latest album is Cosmic Light Clusters (DISCUS MUSIC DISCUS 188CD) and it’s every bit as accomplished and impressive as its predecessors.
Besides Segers, 28 musicians drawn from an international pool of talent appear here, contributing their remarkable instrumental skills, working to the composer’s arrangements. Recordings were made in Japan, the UK, the USA, and at least four European countries before their assembly in this dizzying outer-space themed carousel. To be more precise, some of the 10 pieces are in fact “collective improvisations” and credited as such, meaning the listener can enjoy a rich and diverse mix of free playing, chamber-styled jazz arranged with watertight charts, and progressive-rock instrumental flavours awaiting the ears at every turn. The added bonus this time is the inclusion of poetry recits, such as we hear on ‘Hypnopedie’ (incidentally the finest title Satie never used) with the lyrics and voices of Eleni Siozou, Mami Foujita, and Cathryn Robson who deliver their stern utterances against a Segers instrumental backdrop of languid percussion, electric piano, and sonorous “Old Testament” styled chanting-monk effects…indicating messages of great import to the continued survival of the human race. There’s also ‘Astrum Argentum’, written by Segers and recited by Cathryn Robson, which laments the follies of mankind in pointed phrases such as “This humanoid / Will it ever understand / Where it goes wrong”.
This particular release leaves the impression of being a shade more downbeat than we’ve heard on previous outings, with many slow and solemn passages, and although there are moments of uplift – for instance, the big-band jazz elan of ‘Bottle Opener’, enriched with cracked guitar solos by Jimmy Agren, or certain parts of ‘Elipse Sealed’ which manifest swagger and confidence among the small army of astronauts – they appear quite late in the album’s sequencing, meaning that melancholy, doubt, and uncertainty are set down early on as the key moods and atmospheres. One possible takeaway from this album might be a warning or prediction of what awaits us in our dystopian future, but Guy Segers has (to my mind) a completely different take on this scenario than Richard Pinhas, noted French cybernaut, who inclines more towards a hostile future on Earth riddled with implacable androids and computers blindly doing everything.
Whatever your reading may be, you’re guaranteed a satisfying listen with this album’s generous production of well-crafted and flawlessly-executed music of complexity and density. (10/01/2025)