Tuneloud! Magazine

PHANTOM PHUNK: “STRUGGLE WITH ME” – FUZZ-TONED ALT-ROCK WITH THE EDGY URBAN TONES

Album review published in Tuneloud! Magazine October 27 2018

Alternative indie rock band with hip-hop influences, Phantom Phunk, had their origins in 2014 when a collective of friends, songwriters and musicians got together to share ideas. The band has since gone from a two piece, to a three piece and then a four piece, until their final transformation back to a three piece band in 2018, consisting of Alexa Toro on vocals, Nick Emiliozzi on drums and Hector Fontanet on guitar. Hector was one of the original founders of Phantom Phunk. The power trio has now released its 5 song EP entitled “Struggle With Me”. It’ hard to keep your eyes or ears off this trio of aural vandals. In Alexa you have a front-woman who is as cocksure as she is enigmatic. Guitarist Hector possesses a talent that outshines the craftsmanship of some of his peers, and Nick’s drumming serves as a rock amid the slick and raucousness.

The band have thus far shape-shifted their sonic identity from release to release, but this new offering finds them mixing and matching, as they splice their fuzz-toned alternative-rock with the edgy urban tones of hip-hop and more.

The tracks on “Struggle With Me” will shake up your indie-dance party quicker than anyone else I can think of now. The EP kicks off quickly with “Mediphorical”, and the music is clearly jumping in an exciting direction. Its guitar heavy with its jangly riffs, while Alexa Toro jumps in at all the right places, keeping the song to close to the home front.

The first semi-ballad is “Every Where You Go”. Though this is the slowest track on the album, it certainly does reveal a groovy side to things. The music here perfectly matches the lyrics and the rap verses, while a booming bass line props things up.

And that bass gets into an upbeat and funky rhythm on “No Hard Feelings”, almost the most immediately arresting song on the EP, as it grows and mutates into an insinuating, thumping and slapping bass beast. But there’s so much hot chili surging through Phantom Phunk’sveins that they’re totally on fire on the fast-paced “Something Certain People Say”, as they dish out their own brand of bone-rattling art punk.

But this EP zips around with abandon, never staying in one place long enough to get stale. So before you know it, the band has already launched into “Cheap Thrills” – a track that is totally, stop and start tight.

On this riff heavy track with its martial percussion and soaring melodic hook, the trio comes closest to replicating the nervy energy of epic progressive rock, demonstrating how far Phantom Phunk is able to push the structure of a punk-rock song.

With Nick Emiliozzi’s skittering drum lines and Hector Fontanet’s angular, buzz-saw guitar riffs used both for texture beneath the dense layer of rapped verses, and laying down the rhythmic foundation, this song also best represents the stylistic pivot the band have successfully executed here.

Herein lay the difference between Phantom Phunk and so many of their contemporaries. There is no pretentious posturing, no attempt to look cool for the sake of it, no effort to pander to any given set of aesthetic ideals.

They just do what they have to do, to make explosive ass-kicking songs, which one minute lean toward incendiary alternative rock, and then the next towards emotional arty punk, before forging some streetwise swagger.

by Staff Author

Sounds: Phantom Phunk // Turtle Stand

Album review published in LeftBankMag.com November 6 2017

Despite the “everyday life” theme, the album Turtle Stand as a whole is a relatively wild experience.

"The album Turtle Stand is kind of that cathartic journey that everyone needs every now and then, and that’s totally what it is: a journey. It’s a dynamic tour de force–giving you an upper with tracks like “Back Seat Sax” or “Turtle Stand” and then bringing you back down with “Steep Your Body” and “People Watcher.” You know those rock operas that make you feel your whole range of emotions? That’s what Turtle Stand does, and the fact that a band can show so much range on a sophomore album is impressive."

Left Bank Mag https://leftbankmag.com/2017/11/06/sounds-phantom-phunk-turtle-stand/

Indie Music Review

PHANTOM PHUNK - ARBOLES OSSIFIC

Album review published in Indie Music Review

Wednesday December 28 2016

By Shannon Cowden

Few albums released in 2016 show off diversity and sure-footed command of multiple musical styles like the debut from Tampa, Florida based quartet Phantom Phunk. These four young musical veterans are quite accomplished players who move between instruments with a fluency that recalls some iconic past outfits, i.e. The Band, while carving out a sonic identity that couldn’t be more different.

Their skill level translates into ten songs that bubble over with absolute fearlessness and the confidence to pull it off. The predominant modes that the band works in are alternative and progressive rock, but neither label should prompt you to lump them in with nineties acts or bygone progressive giants.

There are retro tendencies on some songs that are carried off with genuine gusto and originality, but the band takes their template to places listeners will be agog that they travel to. The truest label one can apply to this music, if they insist on naming it, is art rock, but even that fails to encapsulate what they pull off on their first album Arboles Ossific.

It is obvious we’ve crossed over to a new land based on the first song alone. Snowy in Florida has rather sparse lyrical content, but it is anchored by a central image that is as startling as it is heartbreaking. The song has a raucous edge that will grab most listeners by the lapel and not let go with their restless tempo shifts, subtle melodic flair, and hard-hitting attack.

The Unheard Spirit Symphony has an interesting title that doesn’t, on its own, reveal much about the song, but once the track is well underway, it’s easy to understand that the band’s songwriters are willing to throw curveballs at the audience confident that the listeners gravitating to this release will be more than up to the challenge of either connecting the dots or else forming their own interpretation of the material.

Phantom Phunk shifts gears in an imaginative way with Gateways and also ramps up the stakes with one of the album’s best overall lyrics. The band doesn’t cheat the listen in any area of their presentation and the deceptively introspective text powering Sasha Cheine’s vocal has a vital mix of concrete imagery alongside broader, less specific musings, but if an astute listener takes the time to listen, all is revealed.

The brief Hey There has some of the album’s strongest melodic virtues near its beginning and soon transforms into a crackling rock song without losing any of its ability to lodge itself in a listener’s consciousness. The guitar, in particular, has a sharp, stylized bite thanks to the phasing effect accompanying it throughout the track’s duration.

Unquestionably, however, the album’s primary track is the eight minutes and change Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado. Don’t let the title fool you. This is, arguably, the album’s most substantive musical statement. There is a pronounced theatricality to the approach they take here, building this in some ways like a classic progressive epic, yet skewing the listener’s expectations with a variety of twists and turns.

The lyrical content is quite complementary to an arrangement that, despite its breadth, never overshadows the words. It’s that last sentence that, ultimately, defines Arboles Ossific. Every element is working together here in harmony and the seemingly disparate strains of the band’s influences are woven into a whole far greater than the sum of its individual parts.

8 out of 10 stars

Written by Shannon Cowden

Carlito's Music Blog

PHANTOM PHUNK - ARBOLES OSSIFIC

Album review published by Carlito's Music Blog,

Monday November 14 2016.

URL: http://www.phantomphunk.com 

Some bands can and want to do it all. Phantom Phunk from the South Florida doesn’t restrict themselves in anyway and anything that works to improve a song falls within their wheelhouse. The artistic bravery pushing this sort of confidence to the fore can be heard across the board in the band’s first release Arboles Ossific. It’s a ten song collection that leaves few stylistic stones unturned in the band’s search for the right mix of musical ingredients and their instincts for what works and what doesn’t couldn’t be better developed. The four piece eschew virtuoso and star trips, preferring to largely remain anonymous in the hopes that their work speaks for itself, but it is apparent that, despite their relatively young ages, they possess a combined talent that would be the envy of much older and established headliners.  

 The combined talents are fully evident from the first song on. “Snowy in Florida” will leave you breathless just listening to it because the band literally never rests for even a nanosecond. They come at the audience with a wide variety of emotional tones ranging from full-on rock attack to knotty progressive influenced passages. They pull back on that in your face approach on the album’s second track “Sip of Wine” and show listeners the first example of their ability to create suggestive musical landscapes with precisely chosen notes and a sense of restraint that may not be so evident on other songs. They also distinguish themselves lyrically with by exploring the love song theme with a distinctly different and almost literary voice. Their engines rev again for the uptempo romp “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” which, if one wanted to, can be viewed as a natural “sequel” of sorts to the situation depicted in the song before. It has a strong commercial feel too which, thankfully, never panders for the listener’s attention.  

 They turn in a more traditional direction with the track “Hey There” and the classic rock tropes that they throw towards their listeners find their mark. “Looping”, indeed, has a gentle looping sort of effect in its arrangement and its uptempo energy, while not quite as frantic as the earlier song “The Unheard Spirit Symphony”, easily carries listeners along to the song’s inevitable conclusion. The album’s sole instrumental track, “Distant Kaleidoscopes”, proves without any doubt that the band can succeed in delivering compelling performances sans lyrics and provides a brilliant segue into the penultimate track. “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” might be bizarrely titled, but the song is anything but. It’s the album’s longest track but never sacrifices accessibility to make some grand statement.

 This is a band with a boundless future. As mentioned at the beginning, this is a band capable of doing anything and they cut a vivid swath across this ten song collection pursuing their musical ambition and scoring in a big way. Phantom Phunk’s Arboles Ossific is the first salvo of what will surely be a musical run full of fireworks and creativity. 

9 out of 10 stars. 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Phantom-Phunk-812842432163858/timeline/

Montey Zike

Posted by Scottie Carlito at 11:18 AM

Gashouse Radio

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific

Album review published by Gashouse Radio, Monday November 14 2016.

Written by Scott Wigley

Labels are useful for selling things in the marketplace, but ultimately mean nothing when discussing serious artistic work. The best work defies easy categorization. It will be nearly impossible for music websites or merchants to successfully pigeonhole Tampa-based four piece Phantom Phunk. Their name might suggest some sort of post-modern funk band, but such a suggestion couldn’t be further off target. Phantom Phunk prefers to name the ten songs appearing on their debut Arboles Ossific as indie rock/graveyard pop and that should be good enough. In the end, as the cliché goes, it’s the music that matters and the talent level producing these songs suggest powers of mind over matter. There is a superhuman ambition here to cover every musical base that appeals to the band’s members and, surprisingly, they pull off everything they turn their hands to.

The tour de force begins with the fierce thrust of “Snowy in Florida”. Some listeners may be slightly startled by the band’s immediate introduction of recorded media that provides the first human voices on the album, but they will be even more taken aback by their eye-popping commitment to executing, quite well, a dizzying array of shifts and changes that would befuddle most bands. They settle into a more traditional mode for the album’s second track “Sip of Wine” and co-lyricists Hector Alexander and vocalist Sasha Cheine produce tremendous results with this turn in direction and the lyric has unexpected poetic elegance that no one listening to the first song would have expected. The band’s first single and the album’s third song, “The Unheard Spirit Symphony”, covers familiar themes of relationship struggles with, once again, unique and frequently graceful writing. The musical arrangement bobs and weaves, showing different faces to the listeners, but this is ultimately a more commercial piece than anything listeners have thus far heard on the album.

“Gateways” begins with some acoustic guitar but quickly morphs into a straight-forward rock romp with a steady beat. The band’s often evocative writing garners some of the spotlight here as well – the band’s ability to treat well-worn themes with a degree of fresh sophistication is one of the key elements making this release successful. “Brother’s Keeper” is one of the more broad-based accessible songs on the album and has a delicate veneer that the previous six songs, excepting “Sip of Wine”, hasn’t prepared you for, but yet it never sounds out of place. The same personal vision, manifested by four, driving this album is abundant here as well. The eight minute-plus “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” might initially conjure visions of a heavy-footed disaster thanks to it being nearly twice as long as any other track on Arboles Ossific, but Phantom Phunk can handle the extended pieces with every bit as much inspiration as the much shorter songs. They end the album with a final surprise on “Jungle Crunch”. This returns the band to the wild musical textures of the album’s opener and even incorporates rap into their musical identity.

The most astonishing thing about this band, however, might be their confidence. Much of the songwriting features difficult musical changes and an assortment of interlocking parts that, typically, young musicians aren’t ready to take on with a debut. Phantom Phunk, however, is quite fearless and never sound unsure of themselves on Arboles Ossific.

9 out of 10 stars

SOUNDCLOUD:https://soundcloud.com/phantom-phunk-1

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Gashouse Radio is a Philadelphia radio station dedicated to supporting the independent musician. We blend independent music with underplayed mainstream to give our listeners a unique listening experience. We are also an independent music blog that covers the music scene in and around Philadelphia. Tune in to Gashouse Live, weekdays at 6pm ET for new music, contests, giveaways and a unique listening experience.

Indie Mindy

Arboles Ossific Album review published by Indie-Mindy, Monday November 14 2016. Written by Mindy McCall.

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific 

You haven’t heard anything like this in 2016 and likely won’t again until the band decides to release another album. Phantom Phunk are inhabiting a corner of the musical universe that is all their own, boasting obvious influences, but never sounding imitative and transmuting those influences into music and lyrical content that turns longstanding formulas on their head through the creative use of music and fresh imagery. The assortment of tropes, clichés, and misguided attempts for radio play that mark albums from similarly minded peers pale in comparison to the freewheeling creativity on this release. Phantom Phunk come out of the gates roaring on Arboles Ossific and never look back as they sweep the listeners through different sides of a wide-spanning musical imagination that irrepressibly takes flight.  

It is impossible to deny the energy packed inside “Snowy in Florida”. The song doesn’t overstay its welcome, but in the relatively brief time it is playing, Phantom Phunk throws everything but the kitchen sink at listeners with structure, attitude, and a head-down determination to perform their music in the most idiosyncratic way possible. Many of the changes come when the band seemingly stops on a dime and moves in a completely different direction without missing a beat and, while the lyrical content might be a little brief, the combination of its few words and the media clips embedded into the arrangement firmly place it in the progressive category. “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” has much of the same commitment to challenging the listener, but the band’s musical attack is always geared towards entertaining the listener whilst still satisfying the artists’ creative needs. “Gateways” strips the band’s rock attack down to its kinetic and spartan best with a simple, insistent tempo and sparking guitar lines that never overreach. 

“Hey There” has a similar slant to “Gateways” but is much more solidly traditional than its earlier counterpart. The band is clearly grasping for a classic rock vibe here and achieves it without ever sounding too studied or self-conscious. The muted and gray beauty of “brother’s Keeper” musically embodies the lyrical mood and, while the words aren’t that long, they show the same taste and sophistication to put every line on trial and eliminate any unneeded verbiage. Arboles Ossific’s only instrumental “Distant Kaleidoscopes” has a soft peddled psychedelic edge and melodic virtues that are more obvious here than in some of the album’s more progressively slanted songs. It is paired wonderfully with its follow-up “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado”, an extended musical piece that has obvious progressive inclinations while still making excellent use of dynamics and the fundamentals of song construction. The album concludes with “Jungle Crunch”, a wildly improbable musical ride that even goes so far as to find room for rap music under its tent.  

Phantom Phunk’s Arboles Ossific goes places you wouldn’t expect and does so with a ease that surely belies the considerable work that went into making this project a reality. This talented four piece band presents its audience with a large variety of moods and never fails to bring them both intellectual stimulation and a true sense of entertainment that is, ultimately, the hallmark of any great release.  

9 out of 10 stars. 

Skope

Phantom Phunk – ‘Arboles Ossific’

by Skope • November 14, 2016

Arboles Ossific Album review published by Skope Monday November 14 2016. Written by Jason Hillenburg.

Begun in 2014 as a songwriting partnership between friends Hector Alexander and Sasha Cheine, Phantom Phunk soon evolved into a four piece who woodsheded their blossoming material for a year before entering the studio to record their debut album. The result of those efforts, Arboles Ossific, is a ten song debut due to hit the public in November of this year. The band’s eclectic mix of approaches and styles poises them as one of the most imaginative and motivated alternative/progressive rock outfits to emerge in recent memory. There’s a rawboned immediacy surrounding this recording thanks to the band’s obvious talent for sonically presenting themselves; it creates a feel like the band is literally playing mere feet away and that crackling live attack, combined with the sheer quality of the band’s collective and individual performances, makes Arboles Ossific one of 2016’s best, admittedly late, releases.

URL: http://www.phantomphunk.com

It kicks off with startling vitality and force. “Snowy in Florida” The voiceover heard in the song’s opening gives listeners a clean idea about its subject matter – the wave of gun-fueled violence and mass shootings that has scarred American culture in recent years. Vocalist Sasha Cheine’s voice matches the immediacy of the musical attack with little effort and benefits from Hector Alexander’s backing vocals. The voiceover additions continue to crop up throughout the duration of the song and are superbly integrated into the song’s challenging arrangement. Phantom Phunk have an invigorating progressive rock edge with daunting twists and turns propelled forward by the guitar and drums, but its rambunctious attitude is as far removed from the world of Rush, Yes, et al, as a listener could possibly imagine.

“Sip of Wine” is marvelously evocative and takes a slow, deliberate tempo to unwind over its three and a half minute duration. It’s also a stark stylistic turn from the album’s first track and Cheine’s vocal, largely sans any backing this time out, delicately phrases the suggestive lyrics in a manner that maximizes their sentiment and overall impact. It builds to an impressive finale that gives Cheine a chance to explore the higher end of his register. We’re back to more avant garde ground with the album’s third song and single “The Unheard Spirit Symphony”, but it’s likely a more remarkable listen for how well the four piece melds that progressive sensibility with genuine pop excellence. As heard in the preceding song, Cheine’s upper register peaks provide an added thrilling note to already powerfully delivered material.

“Brother’s Keeper” opens with some slightly dissonant acoustic guitar with a moody tenor that’s quickly doubled by an electric guitar line gliding over the top. The lead guitar work, particularly near the song’s end, is quite fiery and further deepens the mood. As the song title indicates, “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” isn’t one of the more mainstream cuts on the release. It has the same measured tempo heard on some of the earlier cuts surrounded with a hazy, dream-like ambiance that the band never allows to defocus the wonderful musicality of the track. It is also the album’s longest song, by far, and shows they have enormous ability to sustain much longer compositions.

This is the sort of album capable of rehabilitating the baggage typically attached to the progressive rock label, but it’s far more than that. Despite the sheer plethora of different sounds and voices fueling these songs, Arboles Ossific never sounds scattershot or patchwork – it, instead, demonstrates astonishing unity of sound and intent.

9 out of 10 stars

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Phantom-Phunk-812842432163858/timeline/

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Jason Hillenburg

Skope Entertainment Inc. (SEI) is a full service music based media company. Skope has been in business since January 2001. Skope is headquartered in Boston, MA but has readers & staff from all over the globe.

Skope covers and engages an audience of music enthusiasts with diverse music coverage for the digital age.

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VENTS Magazine

CD Review: Arboles Ossific by Phantom Phunk

Published by VENTS Magazine November 14 2016. Written by Lydia Hillenburg.

Phantom Phunk are a new band hailing from the sunny climes of the Tampa, Florida area with a debut album, Arboles Ossific, which promises to surprise many with its seemingly effortlessly merger of pop, alternative, and progressive rock. These are ten songs that take a variety of chances and never gamble without some sort of payoff coming from their efforts. In many minds, the progressive label seems to denote that the playing and songwriting alike suffer from some sort of self-indulgence, but that isn’t the case with the songs here. Even on longer compositions, Phantom Phunk never struggle with holding the listener’s attention and never meander. Instead, even a cursory listen to the debut album will wow many with its brash confidence, talent, and cohesiveness.

The opening track “Snowy in Florida” sets an impossible to ignore tone. It comes at the listener with a wild and wooly, brawling spirit that sounds like pure chaos… but when you listen for even a minute, the design becomes clearer. This is a band that will not let the listener rest and their invigorating energy teases chaos to exhilarate the audience without ever actually running off the rails once. The album’s second song, “Sip of Wine”, takes an unexpected turn into stateliness and presents a much more mainstream musical portrait than the opener, but that never means it is any less creative. The shift in sound and approach is flawlessly carried off and there’s a darker, more somber mood working sonically that nicely contrasts with the lyrical content. “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” shares similar mainstream inclinations, but the band can’t resist tweaking listener’s expectations here. There is a much brighter pop step to this than many of the other songs on Arboles Ossific that makes it a relatively obvious choice for a single, but there are vivid progressive strains in this song compared to the preceding number.

The album’s fourth track, “Gateways”, seems to initially promise an acoustic reverie for listeners but soon segues into a straight-forward, but never plodding, stomp with a classic rock vibe and surprisingly bluesy overtones. “Looping”, much like the album’s opener, traffics in jolting tempo shifts and a slightly skewed musical character that promises listeners nothing and remains unpredictable throughout. It isn’t impossible to follow and the vocals find countless pockets in the song to deliver the goods. “Brother’s Keeper” is another song with a moody demeanor, but it also rates as one of the more delicate musical and lyrical moments found on the album.

Arboles Ossific ends with a gloriously demented one two punch of “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” and the finale “Jungle Crunch”. The former is the album’s centerpiece track, based on length alone, and finds Phantom Phunk fearlessly plunging into the album’s most compelling mix yet of rock, progressive textures, and a heavy dose of psychedelia. The band’s obvious humor and fun shouldn’t elude listeners either, but it is easy to miss thanks to the entrancing musical arrangement. The closer is a real shocker. Just when you think Phantom Phunk has pulled every trick they have from their bag of wonder, “Jungle Crunch” comes at you from multiple stylistic directions that are virtually impossible to describe. Highbrow Euro pop, rock, and even rap music make their presence felt here to stirring effect. If anyone tells you that young bands today, unlike the icons of yore, never take chances with their music, play them Phantom Phunk’s debut release. If that doesn’t convince them, nothing will.

SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.com/phantom-phunk-1

by Lydia Hillenburg

indiemunity

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific

Arboles Ossific Album review published by newsroom.indiemunity.com November 14 2016. Written by Cyrus Rhodes an independent music journalist who writes for Indiemunity, among other publications. Indiemunity is an Australian owned music website sharing great music worldwide.

Formed by songwriters and longtime friends Harold Alexander and Sasha Cheine, the South Florida headquartered four piece Phantom Phunk are easily one of the most eclectic outfits to appear on the indie music scene in recent memory. Their first release, the ten song Arboles Ossific, reveals a young band with dizzying ambitions. This isn’t a surprise. Many youthful outfits give priority to trying to write and record a “classic” that will break them through and give voice to their dreams of musical notoriety. Phantom Phunk, however, are clearly not in this world for hosannas and accolades. Moreover, they have the chops and songwriting prowess to realize every goal they set for themselves on this release and never sound uncomfortable doing it. There are few false notes or stumbles over the course of Arboles Ossific but, while the material was reportedly worked on and refined over the band first year and a half of existence before entering the studio to record their first album, there’s little doubt that it showed this promise from the start. 

This is a band that doesn’t play to preconceptions. Any listeners might possess are tossed out with great force by the opener “Snowy in Florida”. Writing as South Florida residents gives this artistic reflection the mass shootings plaguing American society gives this first track added resonance. The music has a herky-jerky quality thanks to time signature moves that the band makes during the song, but it never becomes too much to deal with. “Sip of Wine” is a much more traditional song and has a surprisingly sensitive line of attack. The poetic qualities of the lyric are well suited for one of the band’s most nuanced arrangements. “Sip of Wine” is never in any hurry and the considered development of the song gives listeners a chance to really latch into its mood and feel the performance affect them through and through. “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” re-engages with the band’s progressive penchant but frames those tendencies in a much more pop-oriented, mainstream context. It is easy to lose this in the creative shuffle of Arboles Ossific, but “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” highlights the band’s skill at composing great melodies that don’t sound overly familiar or else outright cribbed from other sources. 

“Brother’s Keeper”, similar to the aforementioned “Sip of Wine”, explores more personal depths to the band’s songwriting than its more pronounced progressive tracks. It has a darker hue however, thanks to the sparse lyrical content that, nonetheless, paints a compelling picture with few words. Phantom Phunk’s talent for making deeply felt songs seem superficially “simple” helps the songwriting achieve a level of accessibility that other bands of their ilk too often lack. The instrumental “Distant Kaleidoscopes” opens with some spartan piano lines before the drums and bass open with a slinking groove that the guitar fills in with ear-catching half formed phrases that interestingly never seem to resolve themselves. The progressive inclination of the band rise to the fore again here thanks to the tempo shifts that they flawlessly execute. 

The two songs ending the album, however, are probably the band at their most daring. “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” is improbably titled, perhaps, but the gaudy name really has no ultimate bearing on the song’s quality. This is what Phantom Phunk sounds like in full on mind-movie mode and this extended piece never takes any chances that lead to self-indulgence; instead, everything here hangs together quite well and every decision serves some ultimate purpose. The last track, “Jungle Crunch”, ends Arboles Ossific on a remarkably daring note. It’s like the band looked back over the songs preceding and decided to rouse their listeners from thinking the exit from this album would be any different than its audacious beginning. Phantom Phunk are brilliant, restless, and their desire to push the envelope carries listeners to lands they likely never expect when they play the album for the first time.  

9 out of 10 stars.