JOLLY – Forty-Six Minutes, Twelve Seconds Of Music

46:12 is the New York based Alternative/Progressive Rockers of Jolly’s first album. The band consists of Anadale (guitars and vocals), Mike Rudin (bass), Joe Reilly (keyboards and backing vocals) and Louis Abramson (drums), and they’re influenced by such bands as Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Mike Patton, Muse, Meshuggah, Tool and Type O Negative.

The music found on 46:12 is atmospheric and peaceful, and at the same time the riffs are often aggressive and dominated by odd-metered time signatures in a way that’s kind of innovative. Quite often when you hear Progressive Rock and Metal albums these days the odd-metered time signatures are used as a way of showing musical skills, which can be disruptive for non-musicians. With Jolly you have several different layers of music. Those who listen to the music for the atmospheric and emotional parts will have theirs, and if you start listening closely and/or analyze the music you’ll find the odd-metered time signatures and other elements as well. There’s something in this music for everyone.

One thing that’s great about this album is that the guitar sound is crisp and cuts through the atmospheric layers like a knife in hot butter. This adds a little extra diversity to the soundscape. Vocalist Anadale’s voice is both soothing and complaining at the same time, and by adding a good deal of reverb and delay to his vocals it sort of becomes an instrument itself more than just plain vocals on top of the music. What he sings is no longer important (though the soul-searching words are great and fitting for Jolly’s music), it’s simply calming to listen to. The words are sung with long tones over the odd-metered time structures and at the end of almost every tone he adds a little vibrato that’s just great. He has found the amount of vibrato that’s sufficient and he balances on a fine line between too much and too little. There is nothing bad to say about his technique.

In addition to the great music found on this CD Jolly claims to have done something new with this release; they’ve included binaural tones. Binaural tones are various forms of brain wave stimulations that are scientifically proven to enrich feelings of happiness, focus, creativity and relaxation. This is done through inaudible changes in audio frequencies, which means that you can’t hear them clearly (their range is from approximately 4 to 40 Hz, and the human ear can hear sounds as low as 20 Hz), but it’s scientifically proven that sounds close to our hearing range can affect us, and can enhance our perception of sound. To really enjoy this feature you need to use headphones, according to the booklet.

Whether or not the binaural sounds can affect your perception of Jolly’s music is a bit difficult to determine, especially since you don’t know where on the album they are located. What is certain is that the music is varied and while it at times can be very aggressive it’s also very soothing and calming.

In a time where everyone wants to be a Rock star and most of the music released seems superficial and plain it’s great to hear a release by musicians who clearly have worked for a long time on their material. Everything in Jolly’s music is well calculated and every song is a new experience. It’s difficult to pick the highlights from this album because it works so well as a unity. For the best experience you need to listen to the entire album. For those who claim that there’s nothing new in today’s music 46:12 is the album that will prove you wrong. Two thumbs up for this release!