1st September 2023 – Panurus Productions
Christgopher Nosnibor
A couple of years ago, Fading Tapes released Cartographer, an hour-long album divided into four near-equal segments which thoroughly confounded expectations, for it was no ordinary collage of found sounds assembled to charter fields of exploration.
On Rites Of Passage, they promise a work of greater urgency than its predecessor, where ‘sparse percussion forms the pulse of the ceremony, as whistles and less identifiable sounds weave through and over droning amplified strings and effects… The remnants of some post-apocalyptic culture so far removed from the catastrophe that the relics of their past exist only as cyclopean ruins and talismans.’
This is some evocative verbiage, and it’s fitting for such an evocative aural experience. Whether or not it’s music, well, opinions are likely to be divided.
On the subject of division, Rites Of Passage is far less equally divided than its predecessor, featuring two compositions, in the form of the ten-minute ‘Bantu’ and the twenty-seven minute title track. An album of two halves it is not. Harder and harsher than its predecessor it really is.
‘Bantu’ is a warping drift of psychedelic semi-ambient desert-rock with some twisted, twangy guitars stretching overheatedly across a lethargic beat which clatters and clumps lazily. But there’s a trilling recorder or something in the distance and the guitars build to a swirling drone and as the sound swells the drone – the buzz of a loose, downtuned string against a fret – grows. That woodwind… it sure as hell ain’t Jethro Tull.
And then… ‘Rites of Passage’. Epic doesn’t cut it. If Earth 2 was ground zero for heavyweight drone, the last thirty years have seen a large number of acts follow suite. It’s fitting that Earth 2 was released thirty years ago, really, as it provided some useful context. While Sunn 0))) have taken the template of Earth 2 and pushed it to the absolute limit in terms of crushing doom-laden drone, others have expanded on this premise. Sleep’s Dopesmoker may be a landmark release in this timeline but the fact s that there have been so many influential offshoots that it’s not easy to keep track.
But ‘Rites of Passage’ is hypnotic, mesmerising. You find yourself zoning out. Of course you do. You’re supposed to. ‘Rites of Passage’ is a remarkable track which plugs away at a relentless motoric beat for its entire duration. There’s a wall of noise building. Sensurround, now, and an enveloping shell of abstract noise around it, a squall of sound.
Glorious and tense and painful in equal measure Rites Of Passage is one hell of an album: All the guts, all the grit, and all of the weight.
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 