Mouth - Vortex (Full Album) Mouth were formed in Cologne in 2000. The Mouth's style is a blend of 'golden era' progressive rock - with influential names such are Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Soft Machine, as well as classic rock/hard rock and prog related names old and new. Indeed, their style is often cited as a mixture of 'retro prog', Krautrock, hard rock, psyche and glam rock - all together it fuses into a unique spleen often underlined with dystopian themes. Some eight years after releasing their debut, Rhizome, and 17 years after first getting together in 2000, German progressive classicists Mouth offer their second full-length in the form of Vortex. An album that winks its ’70s influences even unto its cover art, it finds the three-piece of vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Chris Koller, bassist Gerald Kirsch and drummer/keyboardist Nick Mavridis nestled easily and immediately into headphone-ready krautrock vibes that continue to spread out across the 56-minute release, which arrives bookended by two 16-minute tracks in opener “Vortex” and closer “Epilogue.”
King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, Brainticket, Hawkwind, and so on, are of course reference points as they invariably would be, but like US-based outfit Eye, Mouth distinguish themselves through the fluidity of their composition — that opener arrives in four parts: “To the Centre,” “Turbulence,” “Silence” and “Vortex” itself — through creative arrangements of guitar around various key instruments and vintage-sounding synth, and through the overarching poise of their delivery. Neither does Vortex lack drive, and even as “Vortex” also the longest track — carries through the organ-soaked/lead-topped swirl of its “Silence” portion with spoken vocals behind its instrumental build, Mouth hold to a firm sense of forward direction and don’t simply meander to suit their own whims. And after all that cascading, the eponymous portion of “Vortex” caps with ambient synth, acoustic strum and far-back layers of electric guitar in what comes across very much as a final movement, so there’s a feeling of completeness to Vortex that, informed by the extended opener, continues throughout the proceedings that follow.
On the other end of the spectrum, one finds “Epilogue,” the corresponding finale that nearly matches the opener for runtime. It’s a slowly unfolding, three-stage (mostly) instrumental jam, languid and hypnotic, that gives way to silence after three and 12 minutes and finally leads to a sitar-infused hidden track of organ-laced psychedelia. Arguably the most intentionally molten stretch of Vortex, “Epilogue” is ultimately just that: the afterword from Mouth‘s long-form statement, and while when considering the launch and the landing, Vortex is already a considerable achievement in classic prog, there’s still significant stylistic expression happening in its journey through shorter tracks “March of the Cyclopes”, “Parade”, the centerpiece “Mountain”, “Into the Light” and “Soon After…”, as the three-piece set to balancing their impulses toward willful complexity and cosmic psychedelia.
