I like a good ramble in the morning because such a thing smells like jazz to me. “The Shores of Infinity” by Australian band Menagerie is indeed jazz and it is also the kind of rambling jazz that can, if you are not careful, transition you all the way from day to night.
There would certainly appear to be a quasi-spiritual sidebar to the proceedings as well with these songs rolling forever forward like there was no tomorrow whilst still pulling influences right out of the playbook of jazz funk tripping until the daylight would harshly intrude on your amended perception of reality. I might even say, once again in a week of albums seeming to be more than I might originally have thought, that Menagerie take your consciousness for a walk in the windmills of your mind and, eloquently and elegantly performed as these songs are, the substance appears in what is not there rather than what is.
It takes a certain mental discipline to get in the groove with an album that has only one song with a sub six minute runtime yet Menagerie are not merely posturing for the rhythmic paragraphs and saxophone punctuation allow your consciousness to disconnect from the mortgage and the electricity bill and, instead, take a walk upon the waters of life.
“The Shores Of Infinity” does indeed initially appear to be a cappuccino album but, once you get the taste, you know that it is, in fact, a double expresso.