Review of In The Year 20XX, originally published on leftoffthedial.com.  Written by Alex Baia.

Every once in a while, LOTD sends me an album that comes seemingly from out of nowhere by a band that is both weird and wonderful.  Well, today’s my lucky day, because Chromelodeon is the newest weird and wonderful band that you and I have never heard of until just now.

They self-describe as an “8-piece epic rock group” fromPhiladelphia.  They’re epic alright; a mixture of, among other things, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Mr. Bungle, and old-school Nintendo music.  I make those comparisons only as attempts at reference points.  Chromelodeon actually sounds nothing like any of those bands individually.  Rather, their album sounds like the soundtrack to an epic battle of superheroes and robots.  It exudes triumph and sadness, exhilaration and defeat.  It is lyrical and romantic without ever using words.  The album name, In the Year 20XX, seems to stand for anything and everything futuristic.  A story is being told here, but which one?

The epic feel of the album is accomplished not merely through a diverse range of instruments but also through a diverse usage of the instruments.  Staccato drum marches, shimmering guitar atmospherics, and walls of radiant synths create a feeling that ranges from melodic and dreamy to pounding and jagged.  The synths mimic violins, accordions, droning machines, and the wails of ghostly robots.

The album clocks in at just less than 30 minutes.  I could talk about the individual tracks, but that doesn’t seem necessary, and it might even be counterproductive.  The album feels like a continuous composition.  It may not have been a concept album by intention, but even so, the execution tells a story.  Melodic and rhythmic themes from the beginning of the album are revisited near the end.  Instrumentally, the members of Chromelodeon are talented and able.  Despite the fine individual performances, there is no showing off here.  The instruments sound unified; everything contributes to the whole.

In the Year 20XX is an album that, whether they like or not, will make all listeners grin and take note.  Not everyone likes theatrical, instrumental rock music.  For those that do, this album is golden.  Few bands are unique.  Chromelodeon is one of the few.

-Alex Baia
10/27/03

Originally published on www.abinka.org in November 2003.  Written by Megan Curran.

Notes From the Underground
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the keytar.

In keeping with the keyboard theme, the Chromelodeon CD blew my mind. Chromelodeon is one of the quintessential bands of the rising subgenre of Nintendocore. Sixteen-bit melodies are fleshed out into an eight-member band that is really doing something different in the local scene. I will definitely be checking these guys out live soon. I also suggest hitting up Scooter’s on November 28, where Ryan from Chromelodeon will be spinning 80s and other electropop while the indie kids skate in circles. Sounds super fun.

Originally published on www.digitalmetal.com. Written by Chris Ayers.

Philadelphia’s Chromelodeon are a mostly instrumental progressive-rock octet (!) that almost defies belief. Part C Average, part Queen’s Flash Gordon, and part King Crimson’s In The Wake Of Poseidon, In The Year 20XX straddles the fence between prattling cartoons and prodigious artistry and ends up creating a sprawling epic for the Micronaut universe – yep, Time Traveler, Acroyear, Baron Karza, and the whole crew of that obscure ’70s toy line. “Wily’s Castle” is a prologue of sorts to a mounting battle of good and evil, with sweeping synthesizer passages and snare marches. The six-minute “Mysteriousness: Outer Space” continues the rising action à la Crimson’s Starless And Bible Black, then slips around Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. “Voder” is a terse, synth-driven piece that approaches but does not encroach upon IV-era F**king Champs. Like Rush’s “Hemispheres”, the twelve-minute closer “Eloquence Is Dead” is divided into movements: the first part is pure metallic rock peppered with death-metal vocals and melodic vocoder-delivered lyrics, the latter of which is surely inspired by Time-era Electric Light Orchestra; the second reprises the battle march as a prelude to war; the third is a quiet, Yes-styled interlude, followed by a Mr. Bungle-like accordion episode; and the finale includes said march and a big violin finish. Prog rock for the Nintendo generation, Chromelodeon are a true find and are everything you need for galactic battle adventures with old Star Wars figures.

Originally published on www.impactpress.com in December 2003/January 2004. Written by Alex Llama.

Chromelodeon is an 8-piece Philadelphia group that plays mostly-instrumental rock. Their fondness for science fiction comes through in their work, from the cartoonish cover art to the spacey keyboards and sound effects. They take the grandiose and epic feel of power metal and channel it into outer space. (AL)

Originally published on www.1340mag.com.  Written by John Venvertloh.

One of the things I like to do when I review an artist’s music is get to know them as much as possible. Different bands have different information available in their press kits and on their web sites. It’s both interesting to see the artists and find out what they are thinking. Chromelodeon made that nearly impossible because of the limited info they made available. So I can tell you they’re an 8 piece epic rock group from the Philly (PA) area. (If this sounds like a complaint, I’m sorry. It’s not meant to be.) Based on what is on the web site, if Weird Al played epic rock, his band might look like these guys. They even have an accordion player!!

With so little to go on, the music will have to, er, “speak” for itself. Which is interesting because the CD has four instrumental songs on it. Still not much to go on… The sound is definitely epic rock: lots of big soundscapes, tempo and key changes, different instrumentation, and so on. It’s really very good and I like it a lot. I hear some similarities to Todd Rundgren’s Utopia in a couple of the songs although I wouldn’t say they particularly sound like Utopia. The fact that it’s all instrumental forced me to interpret the music myself. In one sense it’s like a lot of electronica, where the listener has to infer from the title and the sound what the artist might be trying to say. In another sense, and this is really what I came away from the CD feeling more deeply, it’s a lot like listening to a movie soundtrack album when you haven’t seen the movie. I can tell when things are changing but I can’t tell what’s happening. It’s not an altogether bad feeling. I guess I’m just not used to getting it from an epic rock CD!

Did I mention I like the music? I did? Okay, good! I think the CD will appeal to a fairly large audience, not just epic rock fans. Fans of most styles of rock should be able to get into it. Theatrical metal fans could find this CD enjoyable as a change of pace from their normal listening. The band offers a sample on the web site. Check it out.
Key track: mysteriousness: outer space

Originally published on www.splendidezine.com on January 9, 2004.  Written by Mike Baker.

We all remember the final battle of Transformers: The Movie, don’t we? Orson Welles’s star-turn as the all-powerful Unicron, a force so terrible the Autobots and Decepticons most join in battle to save the world? Ringing any bells? The guys in Chromelodeon don’t need to be reminded — they seem hell-bent on scoring and re-scoring the final battle sequence with their brand of instrumental space rock. The not-so-futuristically named “Wily’s Castle” could be offered as evidence to support such a claim.
But wait. Maybe it’s not a Transformers fixation — could it be that these guys have their Rush albums in the disc-changer on permanent repeat? “Mysteriousness: Outer Space” seems to fit the bill, though it eventually turns into balls-out rocker that would make Voivod proud.

Nope. It’s a Transformers thing — the synth-charged “Voder” is all the proof I need. And the meandering “Eloquence Is Dead” is just icing on the cake. (Watch for the Pink Floyd-inspired choir of voices — it’s way cooler than it should be.) Thanks, Chromelodeon — you’ve just given me and all my film geek friends a new alternate soundtrack to our Transformers collections. “Destruction to Autobots!”
— Mike Baker

Review of In The Year 20XX, originally published in Punk Planet issue #60, March / April 2004.  Written by Tim Kuehl.

Memories of sitting at home in the basement for hours playing Mega Man and Zelda come rushing back after hearing these songs. The first, “Wily’s Castle,” is an instrumental that I swear could be a video game theme: dramatic, epic keyboards and crunchy distorted guitars. The second and third songs are also instrumentals, but with a slightly different feel to them. The fourth song is a 14-minute rock opera with processed, spacey unrecognizable vocals. This eventually leads to my favorite part of the song, at about eight minutes, where they add an accordion with a trumpet, violin, humming and some cadence-style drums. This explaination is pointless, because to understand how cool this is, you have to hear it. This is highly recommended.

-Tim Kuehl

Originally published in Origivation Magazine volume 3 issue 4, March 2004.  Written by Robin Parry.

It is a Wednesday night and feels about 30 below in Old City.  At the Khyber, in spite of a four-band bill, the “crowd” consists of employees, band members, those screwing the band members and me.  I am one moment from pulling a Houdini escape act when I glance, empathetically, at the overly exposed stage area and see 8 men appear before a crimson backdrop.  It was not the towering Oscar Wilde like accordion player center stage that glued my feet but instead the hoody cloaked figure sitting on the edge of the stage with a milk crate filled with light effects and finger triggers.  His “play station” was soon to become the master control of a “mystery science theatre” stage sideshow for a band named Chromelodeon.

Suddenly, out of the fridged stillness, like thunder from the Holy Mountain of God, Chromelodeon tore apart the garments of the evening’s common threads with a velvet sword.  Want a visual?  Think Ed Wood.  Campy strobes and frenetic pulsing spots tapped out as in divine trance by a mental whirling dervish with a box.  Opening with a 20-minute song named, appropriately, Adventures in a Haunted House, Chromelodeon created a frighteningly dark, yet comforting dance of divinity.  At it would have been a divine comedy indeed was the music anything less than breathtaking.  But breathtaking it was.  The air was soon filled with harmonic convergence and divergence, microtonal chutes and ladders that guided you on the 43 tone trip to the spheres.  This was hard and gothic in nature.  You could not help but get lost in your own thematic interpretation of the tales being spun by this music.  The multitude of harmonies was more like the sounds from an orchestra than a club band. This was rock opera.  The majesty of the compositions combined with the campy humor of the visual presentation was more than inspired.

Chromelodeon is named after one of the instruments created by Harry Partch.  “We collectively decided on the name and this project itself about 2 years ago, with much respect to the inventor and the instruments conventional use juxtaposed with its creative retooling. The chromelodeon itself is hard to come by (or create), and though we’ve considered acquiring one, its practical use in such a large sized band is somewhat limited, haha.” Say’s one Chromelodeon member who chooses to remain nameless.  The chromelodeon is a keyboard capable of creating four part harmonies with just one key.  Some present day avante artists are known to create chromelodeons by rigging two accordions to achieve the 43 tones per octave.  This band, through use of an accordion, several keyboards, theremin, violins, and guitars appear to create the magic as a unit.  I fear that this band may often get lumped into the “jam band” category though they truly transcend this and most other musical genres. They have been described as “epic” or “soundtrack rock” but still they are more.  My best comparison would be to opera.   This music is intellectual and demands participation from its audience.  I want to study the language with which it was written so as to better appreciate it.

I tried to get the band to give me some information about themselves and this is all I got from my conversation from the nameless one:

“As far as information about us goes, we like to keep relatively mysterious in a humble sense. I appreciate you grasping the fact we desire people to pay attention to the music, and not the musicians themselves, the irony of which for an 8 piece band without vocals is heavy indeed. We all more or less met in a south jersey arcade in the late 80s, and eclectic tastes congealed after many years practicing together.”  

Chromelodeon is, more specifically, Denny Barron, David Chapman, Vinnie Corda, Dino Lionetti, Chris Singer, Ryan Soloby, Danny Tarng, and Eddy Tsang.  They are currently performing shows from Boston to NYC supporting their current CD, “In the Year 20XX”.  This 4 song, approx. 30 minute CD, will astound all but the Justin Timberlake fans amongst you.  Listening to this CD after seeing this band live I would hope to see them next at the Kimmel Center.  They are this large, this extravagant.  This is high art at its finest.

When their ritual performance was complete and their magic well formed in the stale beer ether of the Khyber, the eight holy men seem to slip back into mortals and exit the stage as if nothing extraordinary had occurred.  But we, the small group of witnesses, walk away profoundly changed.

You can find out little more as well as purchase a copy of their masterpiece CD, “In the Year 20XX” from the Chromelodeon web site at www.chromelodeon.com.

-Robin Parry

Review of In The Year 20XX, originally published in Clamor Magazine issue #26.  Written by Jason Kucsma.

The wack-ass cover art for this CD doesn’t betray the genius of Chromelodeon’s debut CD (unclear… is this the debut?).  I almost passed it off as a half-assed attempt to endear the CD to the hip-hop and graf culture with its cartoonish caricature raising his fist in the air over a pile of industrial rubbish.  Truth is, this is pure gold.  Chromelodeon is an instrumental powerhouse (with some minimal vocals) that creates epic tracks from rock and new wave roots – creating something that sounds like Godspeed You Black Emperor! facing Mr.Bungle in a Nintendo Gameboy songwriting competition.  This is truly an example of a book that should not be judged by its cover.  I consider myself schooled.
-Jason Kucsma

Originally published in Aiding and Abetting #251 in March 2004.  

Damn, I think this set of reviews might end up being some sort of 70s tribute. In a good way, which isn’t exactly something I ever expected to hear myself saying. Nonetheless, Chromelodeon channels 70s prog cheese excess into four songs of epic grace and power.

Not unlike a sci fi-nerd version of the Fucking Champs, these boys play synth-drenched mini-operas full of martial beats and sweeping melodies. This stuff is so excessive that it comes almost all the way back to the mainstream.

Yeah, the stuff is silly, but I think the eight members of the band know that. They’re just having fun. And that’s why this album soars. There’s no pretension to be fond anywhere. Just a few folks getting as loopy and geeked-out as possible.

So by now you oughta know if Chromelodeon might be your bag. If you dig music made on a grand scale, I haven’t heard better stuff in ages. I haven’t had an album thrill me and make me laugh out loud in sheer bliss in ages. Quite the package.