Captain Quentin – Instrumental Jet Set

It’s hard to get a handle on Captain Quentin’s eclectic sound; maybe it’s a cultural disconnect (the band hails from Italy), or maybe they just like it that way. After a debut album, and two years of live gigs across the Europe, the band packed themselves off to the countryside for a week, with Instrumental Jet Set the end result. 

Opener Le Case Avanti has rattling cowbells and math rock rhythms, instrumental but varied enough to be interesting, which is as good a template for the rest of the record as you’re going to get. It is, quite deliberately, all over the place, different from post rock’s epic soundscapes and juddering towers of noise, if sharing some of the same guiding inspiration.

Instead you get the jolly synths on Gamma Rana, the jazz snare on Doctor Optional, before the insistent throb of the bass, and the almost-rock riffage of Bobcat (a love song), or the swooping Ti Sei Mai Chiesto Quale Funzione Hai which ends with what sounds like a Wurlitzer being strangled. Confusing if curious stuff.