Tagged: songs

December 9, 2013

Snowland MMXII: revisited debut album has a grand and epic quality

Sorcier des Glaces, Snowland MMXII, Mankind’s Demise Records / Les Productions Hérétiques, CD mdph-03 (2012)

An interesting record in itself in that this is a revisit by Canadian black metal duo Sorcier des Glaces of their debut album released way back in 1998. The debut was self-produced with a very raw sound and was also self-released. A major difference between the debut and this revisit is that the debut featured keyboard work whereas here the keyboards have been removed almost completely.

The reprised album has a grand and epic quality and this is apparent right from the start with the instrumental introduction that features thundering drums and sweeping sandpaper guitar riffs. The ice wizards launch into the business end of the album with “The Winter Nightsky”, a speedy rush-along with clicking cymbals and thumping percussion against high-pitched guitars and a clear icy ambience. The new production gives the music a cold wintry feel and a deeper substance so that it seems to emerge from its snowbound environment without ever actually leaving it altogether, in the manner of sculptured reliefs.

Early tracks are very fast and fairly basic in their structures. “Onward into the Crystal Snows” signals that back in 1998 the duo were experimenting with song composition; the track is varied in pace, rhythm and mood, and changes of key as it progresses. The combined piece “My Journey into the Black Forest / Darkness covers the Snowland” is a significant change from the original separate twosome and features two vocals in a track that features frantic rush and epic stirring martial rhythms.

As the album progresses, the songs get better – or maybe I’m unconsciously being absorbed by the music – and culminate with “L’eternelle majeste des montagnes (The eternal majesty of the mountains)”, a grand piece that captures the awe and reverence the musicians feel for their Quebec homeland.

This recording has real presence even if most songs are short – the combined track comes to ten minutes which is the longest of the entire set – and the atmosphere throughout is a distinctive icy-cold wintry one of very clear, still nights with distant sparkling stars shining down on landscapes of tall, silent fir trees and deep undisturbed snow. The cold mood suits the album’s basically misanthropic premise which reveres the spirits of the land. There is still room for improvement: the percussion sounds quite thin for much of the album and together with the bass guitar could have been made deeper and thicker. I confess I haven’t heard the original 1998 recording but I will hazard that this album is a major improvement at least in its production and changes in sound.

November 10, 2013

Calm Down Grandad

We last took note of the fine English combo Hamilton Yarns in February 2011. We received Calm Down Grandad (HARK! 018) on 2nd November 2012, meaning that the limited pressing of 70 copies with a silkscreen insert has probably long since sold out ¹, but the “quaint” music of this Brighton-based team is always worth investigating. The team of Paxon, Strachan, Colvert, Bissa and Homewood all seem to share a basic “gentle” approach to playing their instruments, treating the accordions and Wurlitzer electric pianos like old friends where only a delicate touch is needed to bring a generous response.

On this release the intention has been to paint pictures – probably executed with basic geometric shapes and rendered in bright primary colours – of an imaginary English workaday world where nothing much happens, and “a man lost in the sea mist” or “dogs on beaches” are regarded as major events on the horizon. These very fleeting impressionistic sketches are occasionally enhanced by unobtrusive field recordings, and the low-key vocals of the singers – unfailingly sung in a deliberately poised English accent without a trace of affectation, and with lyrics intuitively structured to resemble passing fancies of the mind rather than the all-out sloganeering of any given “rock” song. Even the title “Calm Down Grandad” feels like something the band would actually say (in the kindest possible way) to an elderly relative at a tea party; the same phrase in the mouth of a Roger Daltrey or a John Lennon would simply be a classic put-down of the older generation.

I think there is much to be said for the “collective” approach of a group like this. Imagine if Hamilton Yarns were just one person, and we’d probably have no problem writing it off as the eccentric musings of a lone genius. Instead, there is strength and continuity in the fact that the five of them can apparently dream together, sharing the same evanescent images within the comfort of the hive mind. Now I’m a big fan of the Ghost Box project, which has a similar toe-hold in a semi-imaginary 1970s England, and whose creators go to great lengths to reimagine and make real by all means at their disposal. Yet Ghost Box can seem slightly contrived next to the charming, natural, and very sincere Hamilton Yarns.

Actually it is still available from their shop at time of writing. ↩

October 21, 2013

Joining the Dots

Edward Ka-Spel
Tanith And The Lion Tree
UK COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR171CD (2012)

Reissued and remastered by Cold Spring this solo album by The Legendary Pink Dots vocalist was originally issued by Third Mind Records in 1991. Not that you’d know from the packaging which is singularly devoid of information. Perhaps only the initiated are expected to attend this party – still, I likes me a bit of context, not to mention text, of an evening’s sleeve-reading. As it happens, although it is firmly of its time and milieu in some respects, its ballooning strangenesses and eccentric personality allow it to slip above the time-stream and reach our ears from unexpected directions, so although a potentially confusing listen for neophytes, perhaps it should be accessible to others than those in the know.

Tanith and the Lion Tree is a multi-headed, single-minded, vision-driven hybrid chimera of an album. A Synthetic gothic baroque psychedelic science-fictional industrial pop song cycle cut with whimsical musical choices and a certain blasted and trembling apocalyptic awareness of a type that was somehow closer to the surface in the 80s. (I’m thinking John Balance in Coil and Genesis P-Orridge in Psychic TV, for fairly obvious starters.) Edward’s singing voice is a distinctive and singular one: sing-song, frail, wide-eyed and awe-struck delivered with his rhotasistic pronunciation, imbuing it with a naïve, visionary quality. A close reference might be David Tibet, but it is more keening, less malevolent although equally savage, sometimes. Whereas Tibet of this era is all Swastikas and Lucifer and Death In June flirtations, Ka-spel, although still tinged with the gothic at times, is harder to pin down, lyrical themes and emotions swirling like oily iridescences on water. Lyrics are woven from imagistic and stylised surrealist scenes, recurring suggestive phrases and images are recombined and floated in different musical settings.

The start of the album is its most full-on moment. We are thrown in at the deep end, as the lyrics invoke Dachau, flames and the Buddha before Ka-Spel screams and moans, electronically stretched and transfigured a universal howl of anguish “Why?!” sounding for all the world like he’s reporting from the tattered fringes of vision, over a synth-heavy backing. The title track is a ballad which seems to hide significant meaning behind obscure imagery, alternately fanciful and sinister – a fairytale, or indeed mythopoetic, quality, which is something you can pick up on in much of The Legendary Pink Dots work, I think. It is refracted through personal sensibilities and forms of expression, but there is an abiding inspiration from nonsense rhymes, the surreal, the mythic and science-fiction which is transmuted into a new, quivering, unified substance. After this intense opening duo we are allowed some respite as we drift in serene electronic ambience, dialling through the thought stratosphere, re-gathering our scattered bodies and regrouping splatted sens(ibiliti)es. ‘Four out of ten’ once again twists the kaleidoscope flapping synth-filters flopping like space-station issue flip-flops round and around in centrifugally generated gravity as Ka-spel’s disembodied voice soar and wheels. Tortured fuzz-guitar is a distant cousin to Pinhas/Heldon/Lard Free in another galaxy.

As can perhaps be intuited, the album has its own distinctive shape and contours – no off-the-shelf shape, no neat narrative arc, here – gliding from apocalyptic lullaby to hushed ambient hum to inscrutably jaunty (and weirdly loud), oddly attired and jointed song. Images are folded back and in upon themselves, bubbling out in different emotional lights. Recurring mutated lyrical echoes include the Lions of the lion tree and the ‘three times daily’ of ‘Prisoners of War’ which becomes ‘Three Times Daily’, the mantra, a ritual street recording chanted over huffing melodica, an unexplained rite, like Borges’ Cult of the Phoenix. In other places a diaphanous sac of trembling synthetic instrumentation swells and congeals into multiple forms and then is off cavorting with the MIDI marching band. This kind of combination and artistic choice makes the album quite a distinct entity in and of itself, consistent in its internal logic whilst being uniquely its own in distended and slender, bulging and graceful form.

‘The Bakersman’ marries what sounds like preset keyboard chord auto-accompaniment (Single fingered? Fingered?) and dubby delays recognisable from early Dots work with vaguely threatening and comic lyrical imagery. Straightforward narrative is elusive, but the theatrical setting and strange mise-en-scene leave potent non-verbal impressions. There is a blend of fantastical/mundane settings with a hint of bloating comedy, antic disposition and latent confusion, a continental café scene with un-introduced characters performing inexplicable actions. This, logically under such circumstances, is followed by ‘Prithee’, a yearningly heartfelt ballad, frail and gothic, awkward and vaulting at the same time.

Many records tacitly or otherwise pick a direction and move towards it or mine one particular mood; Mr Ka-spel – in common, I suppose, with a song and lyric based approach that is ultimately rooted in pop, though hybridised and grafted with strange protuberances, creates a polymorphous entity of varying mood; he steps over limiting boundaries and wanders through a wide emotional terrain, which may take a little adjusting to if you have been unaccustomed to venturing (or being pulled) into such areas. Certain works of Coil or Current 93 might have a similar effect. In a different way perhaps Michael Gira is another person who lyrically investigates similarly intense emotional material. In all honesty, the emotional worlds which it orbits are not ones I visit musically all that often at the moment, but it’s probably not a bad thing to be turned towards these relatively unfrequented areas by a work of art now and then, and on this showing Ka-spel confirms he makes an interesting guide.

It’s interesting to listen with a contemporaneous work such as Coil’s Love’s Secret Domain in mind. Whilst Tanith and the Lion Tree shares certain similarities – the apocalyptic, the peculiarly 80s overt and somewhat theatrical presentation and peculiar mixture of ecstasy, tragedy and vision – something keeps it apart from its contemporaries and imbues it with an obliquely slanted individuality. Some of the more clunky tropes of the time are sidestepped, and in its hybridity it remains buoyant, an ectomplasmic weather balloon – perhaps because it retains hidden tendrils to expansive and melodic inquiries from psychedelic and progressive rock. Wide ranging and personal reference points – not to mention a leavening humour derived from its more surrealist moves – that serve to ensure it is not tied in to one particular time and movement, and is an intriguing and fairly slippery listen, today, still. It swims in strange waters, as well as post-industrial-isms from Britain; there are hints of the electronic ‘industrial’ from the US, things like Skinny Puppy, even Nine Inch Nails. Not an entirely welcome thought, but Edward did collaborate with Cevin Key of Skinny Puppy, and of course if we are thinking about Coil as well they had a famously protracted collaboration with Trent Reznor. There is always the new-wave and pop sensibility, the jauntiness that is often likened to Syd Barrett whimsy, but could equally be compared to off-kilter Residents weirdo moves. I’ve a feeling their main antecedents may be the also rather unclassifiable Tuxedomoon. In the end, though, the syncretic vision on this solo album is individual and distinct, not to mention a segment of one that has been consistently investigated and developed from the early days of the Dots, their first Chemical Playschools, through their Crushed Velvet Apocalypse and this album onto their more recent albums like Seconds Late for the Brighton Line – a sprawling, theatrical, gothic, ambient, poetic, electronic, spacey, apocalyptic, perfumed, fey, mannered, humorous, po-faced realm which is stamped indelibly as the Dots and Ka-spel’s own. On this album he conjures up with the ingredients to hand a pungent thing, a cathartic spell. Some of the ingredients might not be to everyone’s liking and seem a little over-stated or awkward, but sometimes it’s worth transgressing (now there’s another imperative seemingly marooned in the 80s) ossified boundaries of taste, which will no doubt prove transient, to see what the beyond has to offer. A little bit of awkwardness is probably a small price to pay for a glimpse of a distinctive vision.

October 14, 2013

Eyeless But Mindful

Eyeless In Gaza
Orange Ice & Wax Crayons
POLAND CATSUN CAT9 CD (2012)

Odds n’sods compilations are often regarded as ‘fan-only’ affairs, full of half-baked ideas and wild goose chases that never found their way onto albums proper. In this respect, my first exposure to Eyeless in Gaza – invisible on my radar until now – is something of a baptism of fire. That said, and with certain qualifications, I can report that my first encounter has yielded many episodes of interest and intrigue. In fact, for an ostensible set of offcuts and (potentially) offal, this is a curiously cohesive collection of non-canonical cuts realised in various stages of development, covering 1981 – 1985, and (thematically) tracing EiG’s development into the shinier alt-pop duo that brought us ‘Back from the Rains’ in 1986. Recording fidelity varies throughout, and songs range from scribbled (yet sincere) sketches to polished pop pieces, though I suspect Sound Projector readers would consider this an asset, especially as enthusiastic and illuminating directorial commentary is provided in the sleevenotes by both members, Martyn Bates and Pete Becker, who personally picked every piece from their archives.

Admirers of ‘80s art-pop will quickly warm to the first four cuts, which comprise a suite of upbeat but moody, technicolor synth-pop numbers similarly veined to early Talk Talk. ‘Hours Grow’ and ‘What I Want to Know’ (the latter Becker’s hypothetical choice for single, ‘if only someone could have heard it’) find EiG full in flight and body: reflective yet resolved, held high by a rubbery bass and as many hooks as Prince’s wardrobe, the latter aspect diminishing as the CD progresses. By ‘Ways of Rachel’ and the wintery ‘Street Lamps N’ Snow’ the mood is more mournful, the high vocals have deepened and bear traces of folk singing, which return (by degrees) in later songs; the setting is sparser and more spacious, having stretched to accommodate a smattering of exotic percussion and wind instruments. In fact, it is EIG’s taste for foreign flavours that leads them on some of their most satisfying journeys.

The best evidence of this is to be found in the collection’s many instrumentals, beginning with the windy seascape interlude of ‘P.S. For Michel’, and culminating with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop ‘tribute’ piece, ‘Music For Playgrounds’, a light-hearted jingle, of the same genealogy as Plaid and Stereolab. Other interesting entries include the haunting, O.Rang-esque ‘Formerly At Midnight’, with its programmed percussion, keening vocal refrain and sombre flute phrases. In ‘Egg Box Mask’, a wavering electronic bleat pierces a ghost-ship greyness that calls to mind the bleak, sepia netherworld of The Caretaker; the nautical theme resumes in a more majestic light in ‘Great Ocean Liner’, which makes grander entry, and offers more spacious quarters to its layers of keyboards, scraped guitar and violin, as they gradually cohere into a dense, driven mass. Of a different warmth is ‘Old Lime Quarry’, which sports a slowly-rolling harmonium that fades to admit a shower of resigned twitters and twinkles. Included perhaps to throw listeners off the scent altogether, the seven jagged, guitar-jangling minutes of ‘Red Letter Day’ are more redolent of some New York garret than the studio of one of the UK’s longest serving alt-pop units.

The rest of the album maintains this appetite for adventure, while ensuring explored ideas are realised as fully as apparently necessary. Some earlier locations are revisited, such as on the expeditious synth-pop reprise, ‘Stay’, which might have been better situated in the first part of the album than amidst a dirge of earthy instrumentals near the end. Of these – and cited as Bates’ reason for embarking on this compilation – ‘Dogs Bark’, fan-recorded live in Den Haag, is an earth-toned, Irish-folk take on Terry Riley. The purgatorial fairground feeling of ‘Fear Clutches’ also features strong vocals (though of a more lugubrious species), along with a funereal turn on the organ.

On the whole, the diversity and inspiration evident in these fifteen cuts offer convincing confirmation of Eyeless in Gaza’s putative status as overlooked talent, presumably a consequence of their long-term inability to cultivate a reputation in the ‘mainstream’ arena in the way that Talk Talk managed to. In any event, fans not already in possession of this collection will likely enjoy its manifold angles of EiG during their four or five years. Those unfamiliar with Martyn Bates’ vocals may find them to be an acquired taste – something like a higher-register Mark Hollis singing with a mouth full of orange juice. But to these listeners, the album’s bounty of intriguing instrumentals will be welcome indeed.

Distributed by Monotype Records

October 11, 2013

Endless Autumn

Kilo
The Wildernis
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIO BRIGITTENAU EXB 002 CD + DVD (2012)

With exceptions, the few friends I have know me to have precious little time for ‘happy’ music, and – as is my wont – to disparage it with canyon-sized generalisations, finding it too distracted by its own joie de vivre to deliver substance. Indie pop? With a vocal spectrum that stretches from post-Beach Boy falsetto to wimpy whine? It animates me with an aggressive lust for hateful black metal.

Thus, to my great surprise, I find my apprehension melt away in earshot of the latest work of the laptop pop duo, Kilo (comprising Kompakt alumni Florian Bogner and Markus Urban), with the startling serendipity of an unpretentiously simple set of songs. It may just be that this crisp, sunny autumn day has engendered in me a feeling of false optimism, but this is exactly what I want to hear right now. Though lacking the sheen and budget that sold the summer to Daft Punk, Kilo’s songs smoulder with inner warmth, which is revealed by the layer to careful listeners. And the nondescript, monotone (even banal) vocals are my new fair-weather friend.

‘The Wildernis’ is a hazy hybrid of mildly glitch-gilded, GASeous pop sensibilities shot through with an array of distilled musical gestures from synthetic chamber to shoegaze, though the press release boasts of a more distinct and eclectic set of styles (including ‘rock, jazz, contemporary music and free improvisation’) than I am equipped to identify. In any event, such influences are atomised and wormholed into a dazed and distorted dimension of muted exuberance, casting the record in the same neverwhere light as that which illuminates Fennesz’ Endless Summer. Think of a brighter Tujiko Noriko, a less complex Cornelius or one of Kompakt’s ‘Pop Ambient’ stable and you’re in the ballpark.

Opener ‘For Those Who Go Away’ bounces along at a pace: cheery phrases ping from rubberised guitar strings while phantom syllables sweep the horizon. Maintaining a mightier clip, ‘Masken’ is all handclaps, kick drums and synth swells, marching like animated animals into an endless foreground (though its triumphant tone better befits an album closer). Another highlight in the haze, ‘Melody’ collects chromatic climbing and dispassionate harmonies, rubbery bass and tight (if swerving) kick-drum whooshed by red-arrow layers of neon synth; it is (im)pared-down electro-pop that stands firm, halfway in, undone by a lysergic, lilting flute and rebuilt from scratch amidst perpetual collapse. The harmonious blend of elements synthesized and acoustic, beneath a fuzzy blanket – if clumsy at times – renders the hapless song writing all the more endearing.

A ghostly sense of summer days and nights, idealised and invented, veins every track, including more downbeat numbers such as ‘Shivering’, with its world-weary entreaty to ‘feel my body shivering’ over a slurred, string-weltered backdrop. Its transition into a more crepuscular climate marks an emotional sea change for the album, while eroding the first few tracks’ sense of purpose, to no overall detriment albeit. Woozy instrumental interludes such as ‘Integrals’, ‘Wildernis’ and ‘Langdeep’ perpetuate the directional indifference – possibly to the loss of more impatient listeners – though enhancing the sense of scrapbook scrawl, captured well by the near-ubiquitous, sudden stop/start structure, as one halcyon moment after another gets hastily Prit-stuck for posterity. This approach is expounded upon in the nine-minute ‘Dickicht’ which descends like a cryogenic coma, haunted by the ghost of 1970s Miles Davis: a ponderous Fender Rhodes heaves over 4/4 drum machine and low, melodic mumbles – all elements exercising their right to capricious entrances and exits.

Often ambiguous and ambivalent, over time these deceptively simple songs reveal moods and textures that capture the emotional complexity of autumn mornings and other transitional times. ‘The Wildernis’ is a refreshing and disarming collection of songs, worth the time it takes to befriend.

In addition, the CD is complimented by a DVD, which contains visual analogues of all of the songs, in case the images in your head prove to be insufficient; special mention going to Adnan Popovic’s psychedelic Sesame Street visualisation of ‘Melody’. The films – many topographical in content – are well coordinated with the music, and would serve well as a backdrop to a live AV show, or to the home playback should a projector be available.

August 31, 2013

Key Acoustics

The plaintive cry of Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille is I Wish I Didn’t Dream (NORTHERN SPY RECORDS NSCD 031), on a highly opaque CD of intense experimental guitar murk and equally plangent vocalising. These short, clipped poem-songs are exemplary manifestations of the Emily Dickinson approach taken to its post-modern extreme – broken images, unfamiliar emotions, and nascent ideas stumbling into the world scarce half made-up. Who better to delve into these uncharted seas than the two talented Americans in this duo, who singly or collectively have been producing musical puzzles for over thirty years, producing a large body of work that’s proving impossible to decode – and the problem only increases when you have obtuse, distanced and frown-inducing releases such as this one. We last heard from them as two-thirds of Haunted House, a group producing the wonderful Blue Ghost Blues for this same label in 2011, whose hard-rocking and lengthy guitar noodlings may well have struck a chord with all good lovers of avant axe-excess, but this particular sleep-talking mystery bucket of murmurations and unfinished utterances is quite another brisket of bones. The guitar meanders and squeaks, producing icy cold tones from a meat locker situated thirty miles from the studio. The vocalist is closer to hand, her urgent whispers magnified in a small echo chamber, but her cryptical half-sung sketches – fleeting portraits etched on a frozen window pane with a dusty twig – will have you straining to catch the implications behind each intimate gasp. This is blanked-out, impenetrable minimalist art music of the highest water, a more austere version of Annette Peacock and Joni Mitchell running across the snow with the distorted and attenuated guitars of Japanese ghosts in pursuit of their threatened souls. It also comes with a booklet of stark abstract paintings by M P Landis, completing a package that’s guaranteed to confirm everything you ever suspected about the emptiness and futility of life. Gradely! (01/11/2012)

Another American who, I suspect, is no stranger to staring the Gods of futility in the eye is our good friend Nick Hoffman, the sullen and stern genius who utters little while issuing great but perplexing music on his Pilgrim Talk label. One such batch arrived in November 2012. Cockroach Boy (PILGRIM TALK PT22) is a teamup with Satoshi Kanda, one of his many connections in the steaming continent of the East, and they also made a split cassette for this label in 2010. Kanda has been improvising since 2003 using nothing but an electric bass and some empty milk bottles. Well, he certainly delivers the cream on this recording! It’s one of Hoffman’s “play it and guess” recordings where absolutely nothing is explained and it’s up to the listener to decide when the duo have started or ended performing, and whether or not what they are creating can even be called “music”. Ultra-minimal, confusing, yet it’s full of the unbearable tension that these dangerous situations can often create. Soon you too will be drawn into contemplating these strange tones and lengthy silences, and wishing you were nailed inside a coffin at the cemetery in Fukuoka, where this was recorded. The lengthy title to this 40-minute work, if indeed it is a title, compacts references to demons, corpses and Gods and also retains the air of a schlocky horror movie, in keeping with the grotesque Insect-Fear cover art by Hoffman. I love the way this music consistently refuses easy digestion, and all these Pilgrim Talk releases are recommended. (09/11/2012)

The Polish trio Sonda recorded Sonda (AUDIO TONG AT26.2012) in Sopot, a little town abutting the Baltic Sea, performing in an attic space in 2006. Now released on Audio Tong, it’s an engaging set of music played by the drummer Krzysztof Topolski and the guitarist Marcin Dymiter, with vocalist Tomasz Pawlak “Czaszka” joining them with his husky yawps for three tracks. In their endearingly untidy music, the group make a point of confusing musical genres, aiming to indulge their love of “rock, blues, metal, drone, punk, electronics and improvisation”. Two of the seven tracks are a species of obnoxious guitar grindcore racket that should grease the wheels of die-hard Napalm Death fans, while two other tracks are meandery improvisation of the rattle-and-creak variety, with much emphasis on the metallic resonances produced by cymbals and metal-wound strings. Other pieces are just plain impossible to categorise, although the 12-minute ‘Wszystko Dobre, Co Sie Dobrze Konczy’ has a definite vibe of Can threaded into the sinews of its drumming and electronic drone, making snake-like movements across the carpet with the help of the violinist Marek Dybusc. Competent enough performances, but the trio ultimately lack force and conviction, no matter which style they adopt. Lovely deep sea cover art. (02/11/2012)

Strange furry thing from Jüppala Kääpiö, the duo who brought us Spring Promenade in 2010. Despite their Finnish name this band is actually two Japanese musicians Hitoshi and Carole Kojo who live in Belgium. Rewound Grooves (OMNIMOMENTO OM 07) may be a concept record telling the story of the Krampus, a vicious and hairy beast drawn from Alpine mythology who is associated with Winter and may be the enemy of St Nicholas – a sort of early manifestation of the Grinch. The music by Jüppala Kääpiö is however anything but beastly, and comprises four lengthy and limpid drones of ambient swirlery, all created from numerous layers of gentle electronic tones, breathy vocals and endlessly spinning tape loops (probably enhanced by digital means). The album strikes a thoughtful and contemplative pose, and is generally soothing and positive, with only the third track ‘From Veins To Nebulae’ introducing an element of drama or danger. Somewhat diffuse and static music, but there is much craft in the Kojos’ sound-generation technique, and they rarely commit a careless or half-baked statement to tape. Besides the fake fur wrapper, there is also a screenprinted band of card which can be worn like a mask. (29/11/2012)

If you’d prefer drone music with more darkness lurking in the corners, then as ever Sum Of R will satisfy your thirst for all that’s lugubrious and sombre. The sounds on Ride Out The Waves (STORM AS HE WALKS SAHWLP001) are produced mostly by Reto Mäder working in the studio overdubbing his keyboards, bass, electronics and percussion, although Julia Wolf (what a brilliant name for a supernatural horror combo like this one) adds poignant stabs from her fatal guitar at chosen stages on the forest pathway. I tend to remember Sum Of R records as an unbroken feast of thick occluded dark ambience, but Ride Out The Waves has a lot more variety and incident than their usual output, each track quite unlike the last, until the LP becomes the soundtrack to a very disjointed and episodic horror film. Said film, if it exists, is characterised by much bloodshed, sabres, and men on horseback cutting down villagers with a pitiless scowl of contempt. Aye, there is still plenty of the characteristic bubbling black tar music which induces fear and misery, but the heavy metal guitar swipes add a very welcome element of tension, plus the spare percussion will appeal to all you hard-boned stoner freaks – just check out the slowed-down battering effects on ‘Alarming’, the truly apocalyptic nightmare that brings the album crashing down into ruins. I’ve always said Reto Mäder should have made a Black Metal LP, but I feel that genre may sadly be in decline now. Even so, Mader should join forces with MZ.412 some day, and the results would be truly monstrous – they could produce the ultimate “atmospheric dread and cold death” album. The photo shows a promo CD, but the release is vinyl.

August 25, 2013

The Lost Entrance of the Just: soft and pretty black metal pop with an ominous, brooding edge

Official sleeve image from handmadebirds.com

Circle of Ouroborus, The Lost Entrance of the Just, Handmade Birds Records, HB-020 (vinyl release 2012, CD release 2013)

Originally released on vinyl in 2012, this was one of two full-length recordings put out that year by the idiosyncratic Finnish black metal / post-rock / shoegazer pop duo. These guys can always be relied on to deliver something, usually a few EPs and one or two albums, each year and 2012 was no exception. Compared with previous recordings of theirs that I’ve heard, this album seems softer and fuzzier, and the lyrics seem less melancholy, even appearing to aspire to hope and positive emotion. The feeling that CoO may have mellowed and adopted a more settled, more accepting and less angry attitude is never far away.

Opening track “Cast in Clay” suggests this new outlook with its softened though slightly ominous clouds of guitar blur through which lazy percussion and Antti Klemi’s vocals emerge and proceed at a loping pace. “Black Hole Womb” might just be a return to the CoO of old with its sharp, arch sound and mood and an extended section with angry spoken word against a backdrop of rising and falling sea-waves. But there’s a jauntiness in the music that suggests a relaxed attitude of going with the flow of the universe, absorbing what it offers or deals out, treating everything as part of one’s journey through life and beyond.

Throughout the album there are a lot of very pretty tunes and even Klemi’s famously individual style of awkward, seemingly off-key singing and occasional shouty declamations doesn’t detract from the warm glow that emanates from the muddied melodies and easy-going drumming. The music serves as a vehicle for the lyrics and to create a highly immersive atmosphere so it tends towards minimalism and loose structure. Melodies and riffs exist in an almost formless way and slower songs like “Mirror Universe” are on the verge of falling apart from drunkenness. The album ends with the only Finnish-language track “Toivosta Syntynyt” (roughly translating as “Hope born” – I hope, I’m only using Google Translate!), a darkly edgy piece with an air of wariness whose meaning and place as closing track must be wondered at.

This is a poppy album with good if not distinct melodies, riffs and rhythms though with a dark and sometimes menacing atmosphere. The music is not one of the band’s best but makes up for the lack of aggression and energy by being a heavy, almost formless and brooding presence. The emphasis on repetition and monotony has a trance-like effect on listeners. This is the kind of recording that grows on listeners over time.

The vinyl issue run is already sold out – CoO fans are nothing if not loyal.

August 23, 2013

Abrahadabra: a dark black metal / shoegazer pop album of despair and foreboding

Circle of Ouroborus, Abrahadabra, Kuunpalvelus, LP (2012)

One of my favourite Finnish bands, the black metal / shoegazer post-rock duo Circle of Ouroborus has been prolific over the last several years and in 2012 alone released two studio albums, several EPs, a split album and a compilation album. “Abrahadabra” is the second of the two studio full-lengths; the title is a reference to the musicians’ interest in the occult and magic, the word being made up of one vowel appearing five times and six consonants, making a total of 11 letters. (In 2011, an album “Eleven Fingers” was released.) The recording under review sees CoO in their melodic dark depressive black metal pop mode with plenty of despair expressed in the lyrics. The band’s style just about bleeds melancholy and a dark feeling of foreboding: the music is often very doomy, vocalist Antti Klemi half-sings / half-chants like a lone Cassandra warning of trouble ahead and the texture of the music and instrumentation has a forlorn air.

The sound of the album is less muddy and steamy than some of the band’s previous work and the drums are actually very crisp to the extent of dominating the music at times. Klemi’s voice, touched with reverb as ever, still sounds awkward but he hits the notes spot-on. The guitars have a slight buzzy sound but the clouds they form are light.

To be honest, no great melodies or riffs hit me on the first hearing and it’s with subsequent repeats that the album’s charms start to dawn on me. “These Days and Years to Kill” is a cry for understanding and empathy if not for help, and on this song at least Klemi finally finds an emotional depth and range in his singing that took a long time over the band’s career to coax and nurture. “Remembrance” is a slower, heavier, doomier track and might be the most metal-sounding song. “Six Hands” has an otherworldly air: Klemi’s voice is dreamy and almost floating away, and the entire song, starting with the beguiling long introduction, is urging listeners to drift away into a trance with it. For once there is a backing vocal as though Klemi’s soul has split into two and a part of it is already advancing into a realm of non-existence.

A couple of reviews I’ve seen rate “Like Silent Meadows” highly and it has a good riff in parts but otherwise it seems no different from the rest of the album. “Dementia Praecox” is the album’s longest track at 9 minutes and it’s more distinctive than the others in its rhythms and beats

I’d rate this album as fairly good but not near the band’s best. Klemi’s singing is sometimes monotonous across songs and the minimalist style of music basically serves as backdrop for the singing and lyrics. The dark melodic post-BM music rarely ventures away into another music genre. Still, CoO followers are nothing if not a devoted bunch and the band’s releases always sell very well so if TSP readers are keen on buying this album, they had better hit the Kuunpalvelus link quickly. The album cover artwork has a dreamy, mystical appearance that might have a secret message behind it.

July 18, 2013

Necheshirion: intense all-out blackened death metal attack

Gevurah, Necheshirion, Profound Lore Records, CD PFL-116 (2013)

For a genre famously dismissive of standard organised religion in all its forms, especially those of the Abrahamic persuasion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), black metal does occasionally boast some recordings that reference some of the more esoteric aspects of these religions even if superficially. Here might be one such recording, “Necheshirion” by a French Canadian duo called, er, Gevurah: the project name is derived from one of the focal points of the Tree of Life in the Jewish Kabalah. The album is a fast and dense yet melodic blackened death metal effort similar in style and approach of intense French acts like Antaeus. Apart from one song “Divine Ignition”, the music here makes very little reference to the concepts and imagery of mystical Jewish Kabalism; if anything, the lyrics across the album read more like appeals or pledges of loyalty to Satan and the rejection of the God of Abrahamic tradition.

With clear and sharp sound and production, plus a dense battery of guitars / drums / vocals in perpetual attack mode, the warriors of Gevurah ride forth confidently into realms of darkness to find union with the true forces of the cosmos. All tracks are robust in form and execution, high on passion and aggression, and explode with force, energy and speed at some point in their performance. This makes for a strong and forceful album, busy all the way through with drums in blast-beat frenzy, the guitars shredding like crazy in tandem and the vocalist roaring, declaiming and urging on battle in his death-metal best form. While the music is consistently good right across the five tracks on offer, the third track “The Throne of Lucifer” tips the edge over the rest by dint of its off-key moments, a dominant bass melody sometimes at loggerheads with the rest of the song, the raw peeling-paint texture of the guitars and the occasional trip-overs in the rhythms that might remind some of us of Deathspell Omega’s more jazzy moments. “Divine Ignition” is not far behind in the laconic, casual ferocity behind its sharpened chainsaw tremolo strings.

The album finishes on an extreme all-out-attack blackened death high with near-lunatic tremolo guitar burn-down and moments of sombre mood and solo bass guitar inserted in among the passages of shit-hot six-string blast. The moment passes quickly and listeners are left stranded in sudden utter silence wondering where the storm went. Some people may feel drained from the music’s sharp and jagged tones, the sheer sustained radioactive intensity and force of it all. Yep, “Necheshirion” is a test of nerves and endurance, severe in the lesson it teaches in the falseness of organised religion, the search for true faith and where it must lead if one is to attain union with the cosmos.

Gevurah (representing Severity in Kabalism) are well named. Interestingly for a band of their background, the guys include no atmospheric snow or wind sounds, folk music or references to Quebecois nationalism and the land on this album.

Contact: Profound Lore Records

July 7, 2013

Zombie Skin: black metal kiddie pop debut on mainstream talent television show

Aaralyn and Izzy, Zombie Skin, America’s Got Talent auditions (Season 8, Episode 4), New York, recorded 25 June 2013

Waaal, blow me down, for once that TV show “America’s Got Talent” lived up to its name and featured some real talent! Brother-sister duo Aaralyn (aged 6 years) and Izzy (aged 9 years) performed their sweet little track “Zombie Skin” before the four judges at the show’s New York audtions. While Izzy provided steady support with his drum-work, Aaralyn, togged out in black top, a monochrome polka-dot skirt and pink stockings, and with a solemn expression on her innocent wide-eyed angel face, belted out a shrieky tirade in full grim black metal vocal style. All four judges were blown away – though it has to be said two were blown in the opposite direction from the other two – and the audience (in particular the ladies) jumped to their feet, whistled, made horned-devil signs with their fingers and cheered on the little girl.

Admittedly the song was nothing out of the ordinary but Aaralyn roared into the microphone as if her life depended on it, all the while standing motionless as though bolted to the floor and her face expressionless throughout the song while it lasted.

Unfortunately the performance was cut short by one of the judges who feared for the little one’s throat, though she did assure him that screaming didn’t hurt her tonsils at all. Mel Brown aka Scary Spice admitted to being scared for once in her life and the other female judge Heidi Klum seemed unsure as to what to do. The two male judges Howard Stern and Howie Mandel loved the performance and immediately voted to send the kids on to Las Vegas. Klum also voted in favour of the children wowing the punters in that multi-casino parlour if only because she was curious to hear more of the youngsters’ material, in particular “Lullaby Crash”. Gotta wonder what Klum expects from that song: a hit-and-run collision between “Rock-a-bye Baby” and David Bowie’s “Always Crashing in the Same Car”?

Proud Dad, aw-shucks bashful and surprised at the overwhelming reactions of the audience and the judges, was brought out of the wings onto the stage to acknowledge Stern’s fulsome praise. It sure says a lot about how our society has progressed that in the past, children were nurtured in mischievous forms of social rebellion by their uncles (usually the younger, more wayward black-sheep-of-the-family brothers of their strait-laced fathers); these days it’s the dads themselves who bond with their offspring in this way. Needless to say, Mom was nowhere to be found.

The future of USBM is looking good in the capable hands and voices of America’s young generation with children like Aaralyn and Izzy.

Catch Aaralyn and Izzy’s performance on Youtube at this link.