A collaboration between Mat Sweet (Boduf songs), Aidan Baker (Nadja) and Nathan Amundson (Rivulets) which manages to mix the three people's individual styles and come up with an album that sounds all over the place, stylistically. From plaintive folky strumalongs to heavy drones, and with all manner of clankings and noises inbetween - this album is a puzzle without a solution. The three people involved have all released fine music on their own, but this is no guarantee that they should create something inspirational together - and maybe this was my problem when playing it the first few times, that the weight of expectation hyped it up to an unreachable level.
So i took a step back and tried to listen to it as a new artist and, though difficult to separate this from what i already knew, found it easier to take and far more enjoyable. The music works best when there is a strong sense of melody as it seems to ground the musicians and stop them going off on unnecessary tangents. The beautiful last track on side one takes your breath away in its simple piano refrain tinkling away whilst rising sounds (altered voices? detuned whales?) appear in the background and fade away.....before returning again and again.
Side 2 follows a path of a similar dissociative manner with alternating aspects of light and confusion - that is always beautifully played (and fantastically produced - the guitar tones, in particular, sound amazing) and keeps you on your toes. The subtle guitar weavings of '(More) Weather' is followed the 'orrible noise and butchered electronics of 'Down among the Mashers Part 4' - which sounds like entire repertoire of Justin Broadrick smashed to pieces, reassembled and then squeezed into 90 seconds. This is the musical equivalent of a 'BOO!' moment in a horror film. There's quite a few of those here.
And this album, like the Belong one yesterday, is playing havoc with Eric's bowels.
No comments:
Post a Comment