Gabriel Saloman (former Yellow Swans) returns with another ultra-lugubrious droner after his superb gloom-a-thon Soldier’s Requiem from 2012. Movement Building Vol. 1 (SHELTER PRESS SP051) comprises ‘The Disciplined Body’, a two-part work created with guitars and percussion and mucho patient studio layering. This time we don’t sensate the sort of half-suggested wartime narrative that we got from Soldier’s Requiem, but the attention to structural resilience is right there in the sequencing and construction of these 34 minutes, even if everything does unfold at a dismally slow pace. The general massed-guitar droning through multi-processing effects is shifted to match the changing themes, sometimes like an icy cold wind, sometimes a warmer tone, like a strangely comforting blanket of muggy misty weather. Snare drum blasts arrive like unwelcome guests, perhaps as harbingers of war, plague and famine; while the entire epic sweep finishes up with a long and protracted howl of pain. While segments of this record may sound a little over-familiar, Saloman’s compositional skills, and evocation of poignant emotional states, help this record reach catharsis. Vinyl pressing. From 22nd September 2014.
