Posts Tagged ‘A Place to Bury Strangers’

GHXST – Admire

Posted: 25 April 2022 in Albums
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22nd April 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

This seems to have been a long while coming – and that’s because it has. The New-wave / No-Wave gothy post-punk duo have been kicking out killer EPs for a decade already. Six EPs and a single to be precise, with each EP containing five, six, or even seven tracks. It’s a substantial body of work, however you look at it. And yet it’s only now that they’ve got around to an album proper.

They’ve made the most of the time and the previous releases to realty hone and refine their sound, and having done so, Admire feels like a proper album. It’s ten tracks, solid, packed, back-to-back, arranged with sequence in mind. It’s a sequence that finds things getting slower in the second half, and it would be interesting to hear how this pans over two sides of vinyl. Admire would likely be dissected as having a ‘fast’ and a ‘slow’ side.

As Admire demonstrates, GHXST have remained true to their original sound and ethos – scuzzy, reverb-soaked murkinesss, with a deep psychedelic twist. There’s a lot of twist and a lot of noise on Admire. Comparisons only go so far with these guys, and while The Jesus and Mary Chain is an obvious one, they’re probably closest to A Place to Bury Strangers in their shimmering wall of sound face-melting blast of FX and overdrive. I may have also mentioned Curve before as a comparison: it still stands, and I’m wondering why when people are whittering about various 90s bands

The build on the upward arc is fairly rapid to say the least: it’s just over two minutes into single cut ‘Pls, You Must Be a Dream’ that the extra level of distortion kicks in and blows the roof off everything. And for a time thereafter, you find yourself adrift in a wash of reverb and overloading distortion. Things simply drift: it’s dense, it swashes and coasts along, splashing against the shores as the waves splash the deck, and each song has a certain supple power.

‘Sonores’, the album’s seventh track, marks the first real spot of respite as they pare things back to a swampy synth and bulbous bass notes hang in the dense air, and ‘Nights of Paradise’ slows things to a crawling trudge that threatens to take the album down into a low-tempo slump, as if they’ve run out of steam and simply got stoned to a half-pace stoned sonic swamp. In context, recent single ‘Marry the Night’ is a bit of a crawler, and closer ‘Only Lovers’ is a murky slice of wistful melancholy. Of course, all the best albums conclude with a slow-burning epic, and this is definitive. Don’t ask me why, but this is one of those slow-burning min-epics with piano and a towering wall of rippling overdrive what tugs hard on the emotions and makes me want to cry without even understanding why. But it is, without question, an outstanding finale to what is, also without question, an outstanding album.

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Watch: ‘My Head Is Bleeding’ by A Place to Bury Strangers

Posted: 14 March 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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A Place To Bury Strangers share the video for ‘My Head Is Bleeding’ from their new album, See Through You, out now on vinyl via Dedstrange.

Right away, ‘My Head is Bleeding’ gushes from the speakers with pummeling drums and whirring, anxious electronics–preparing listeners for one deafening blunt-force chorus after another. Wispy synthesizers and lacerating chemical burn guitars engage in a heated call-and-response while Oliver Ackermann extends a desperate plea for sanity to whichever metaphysical entity might be listening. “This song is about internally begging to a God when you might not necessarily believe in one,” says Ackermann. “It’s that moment where there’s just a sliver of hope that anything in your head might connect you with the Universe and actually make a change.”  

In the accompanying video from director Travis Stevens (Jakob’s Wife, Girl On The Third Floor), flesh and blood commingle in a pileup of heaving, mysterious biomass as a mechanical womb gives birth to an oily, ectoplasmic form. Says Stevens, “The entire album rips but there’s a plea to transform suffering into joy in this song that I really sparked to. In order to emulate the raw unpredictability of an APTBS performance, I tried to create a similar magical combination of flesh, emotion, intuition and technology."

Watch the video here:

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Watch: ‘Love Reaches Out’ by A Place to Bury Strangers

Posted: 14 February 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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A Place to Bury Strangers find tenderness in the unlikeliest of places with ‘Love Reaches Out’, the fifth single and new music video from their critically acclaimed sixth album, See Through You, out now (digitally) and on March 11th (vinyl) on Dedstrange.

“’Love Reaches Out’ is the hope at the end of the tunnel that concludes this album,” says Oliver Ackermann. “I went through such a traumatic experience writing this record and yet people were there to help me, so this song is about appreciating and thanking them.” With its triumphant marching snare and a hooky bassline, ‘Love Reaches Out’ concludes See Through You on a warm and fuzzy note—though not the guitar kind. No circuit can contain the electrifying joy of two souls united. “Moments like this highlight how much [Ackermann has] grown as a singer,” writes Heather Phares at AllMusic. In her review of See Through You, she praises ‘Love Reaches Out’ as “Ackermann and company’s most empathetic song to date.”

In the music video directed by horror auteur Gabriel Carrier (For The Sake Of Vicious, The Demolisher), the third in a series of horror movie directors the band reached out to, a woman unexpectedly encounters and reaches out to a shapeshifting entity in the most unlikely manner. This entity befriends her after it was left for dead and gives her the support needed to help battle her own anxiety and inner demons. “It reminds us not to turn a blind eye to the small things and that friendships can manifest in the most unlikely ways,” says Carrier.

Watch the video here:

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A Place To Bury Strangers – See Through You

Posted: 28 January 2022 in Albums
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Dedstrange Records – 4th February 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

A Place To Bury Strangers have been pigeonholed variously in the brackets of noise-rock, shoegaze, indie, space-rock, and psychedelic rock. All of these are fair and accurate, but fail to represent the band’s expansions of these genres, and the fact that for all the noise, there is nuance. Listening to their catalogue of ear-bleeding sonic squalls reveals far more depth and range than this reductive characterisation implies.

The last few albums have tracked quite a journey, and See Through You resumes the trajectory of Worship and Transfixiation, whereby the production became evermore wayward and unconventional ahead of the rather safer-sounding pop-orientated Pinned (these things are relative, and it was hardly R1 mainstream pop). With each release, they’ve stepped further and further away from the accepted conventions of production and mixing, not only going evermore lo-fi, but also shunning by stages the conventions of balance, of tone. The vocals are way down, the drums are way up, and the EQ is utterly fucked as everything wallows in a murky midrange. It’s not an easy listen, and the song structures are far from obvious or clear either

So while recent single release ‘I’m Hurt’ leans heavily on The Jesus And Mary Chain’s ‘The Living End’ (and it’s by no means the first time they’ve taken cues from JAMC), the reverb echoes into a cavern of murk, as if a mudslide has slipped into said cavern. The chaotic crescendo that explodes by way of a finale still splinters the eardrums, but it’s not in the kind of blistering wall of treble that defined their sound up to Worship.

This evolution was necessary: they’d taken the limits of blistering psychedelic shoegaze wall of noise to – and beyond – its limits, with Worship standing as something of an apogee. But this was the album that also saw them recognise their limits while pushing beyond them. They have returned to more overtly structured songs for this outing in comparison to Transfixiation, while testing boundaries once more after the comparative retreat of Pinned. In short, it’s A Place to Bury Strangers at their best. That’s to say, it’s a squalling, blistering racket and it hurts, and there’s a fait bit going on, and beneath the crazed noise, there are some tunes. In fact, there are a fair few tunes, and some good ones at that.

The first track, ‘Nice of You to be There for Me’ feels like sarcasm and the guitars sound like melting cheese, the sonic equivalent of Dali’s clocks, a warping, dripping mess. And fucking yes. It’s as exhilarating as it is fucked up. ‘So Low’ does return to the spiralling explosive bass-driven racket of Worship and Transfixiation, but then things start to get really fucked up on ‘Dragged into a Hole’ as the frenetic disco beats are all but buries beneath a driving wall of obliterative bass and screaming guitar feedback. The distorted vocals only add to the head-smashing experience.

‘I Disappear (When You’re Near)’ is another bass-driven doomer, the pairing of a metronomic mechanised drum beat and throbbing bass that’s booming, grainy, distorted, and swathed in reverb is powerful. The guitars merely add texture, screams of feedback occasionally breaking through, while the vocals float in the swamp of noise. If It’s not already apparent, this is a noisy album. ‘My Head is Bleeding’ is kinda subdued, kinda electro, kinda pop, but in a Suicide sort pf way, and when the guitars explode in a fizzy mess, it’s an absolute rush, and everything that’s good about APTBS.

Closer ‘Love Reaches Out’ is essentially ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ merged with ‘Ceremony’: it’s the closest they get to commercial pop on this crazy roller-coaster of post-punk noise – and there is certainly a lot of noise.

So what to make of See Through You overall? It’s a solid album and quite daring, on many levels. When a band of this statute releases an album half their fans probably won’t like, you have to give respect to their prioritisation of their artistic vision.

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Watch: ‘I’m Hurt’ by A Place to Bury Strangers

Posted: 18 January 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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A Place To Bury Strangers have shared ‘I’m Hurt’, the newest single from their anticipated sixth studio album, ‘See Through You’, out February 4th (digital) and March 11th (vinyl) on Dedstrange. Following previous singles ‘Let’s See Each Other’ and ‘Hold On Tight’, the post-punk legends dive headfirst into suffering on today’s dark and explosive ‘I’m Hurt’.

The accompanying video, directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle (Dementer, Jug Face), is the first in a series of ‘See Through You’ videos from horror movie directors hand-selected by A Place To Bury Strangers. Under Kinkle’s frantic and hallucinatory direction, Oliver Ackermann’s expression of relentless liminal terror is transubstantiated into a brutal backwater blood feast. While the flickering, kinetic visuals will be familiar to anyone who has seen the band live, the psychological horror at the heart of ‘I’m Hurt’ is raw. Together, Kinkle and APTBS scramble our collective unconsciousness with scenes of grotesque public freakouts from the outskirts of the subliminal that are tied to a scorned woman’s black magic ritual which conjures up teenage demons on the hunt for revenge.

Watch ‘I’m Hurt’ here:

“‘I’m Hurt’ is the sound of friendship dying. At the time of writing this song, I was going out of my mind dwelling on conflict in my head and beating myself down while trying to rebuild my faith in humanity which is reflected in the actual structure of the song. The drums build with this frustration and a desire to scream with no voice. Listen closely to the vocal phrasing of ‘I’m Hurt’ in the chorus and you can hear the self-doubt and failure I was experiencing at the time,” says Ackermann.

A Place To Bury Stranger’s Oliver Ackermann always brings surprises. The singer and guitarist has been delighting and astonishing audiences for close to two decades, combining post-punk, noise-rock, shoegaze, psychedelia, and avant-garde music in startling and unexpected ways. As the founder of Death By Audio, creator of signal-scrambling stompboxes and visionary instrument effects, he’s exported that excitement and invention to other artists who plug into his gear and blow minds. In concert, A Place To Bury Strangers is nothing short of astounding — a shamanistic experience that bathes listeners in glorious sound, crazed left turns, transcendent vibrations, real-time experiments, brilliant breakthroughs.

And just as many of his peers in the New York City underground seem to be slowing down, Ackermann’s creativity is accelerating. He’s launched his own label – Dedstrange – dedicated to advancing the work of sonic renegades worldwide. He’s also refreshed the group’s line-up, adding Ceremony East Coast’s John Fedowitz on bass and Sandra Fedowitz on drums. Ackermann and John Fedowitz are childhood friends who played together in the legendary Skywave, and the band has never sounded more current, more courageous, or more accessible. 2021’s Hologram EP was the first release from the new line-up – and the first on Dedstrange – and the reaction was ecstatic, with Pitchfork saying that Ackermann had “transcended his gearhead tendencies, gracefully navigating fuzz and feedback loops as well as melodies and hooks”. ‘See-Through You’ pushes things even further. Simply put, it’s an epic, instant classic.

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A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS 2022 UK/EUROPEAN TOUR DATES – TICKETS ON SALE HERE

Wed 09 March – Hafenklang – Hamburg, Germany  

Thu 10 March – Beatpol – Dresden, Germany

Fri 11 March – Klub Poglos – Warsaw, Poland

Sat 12 March – Futurum – Prague, Czech Republic
Sun 13 March – Randal Club – Bratislava, Slovakia

Mon 14 March – Durer Kert – Budapest, Hungary

Wed 16 March – Control Club – Bucharest, Romania

Thu 17 March – Mixtape5 – Sofia, Bulgaria
Fri 18 March – Eightball – Thessaloniki, Greece

Sat 19 March – Temple – Athens, Greece
Mon 21 March – 25th of May Hall – Skopje, Macedonia

Tue 22 March – Club Drugstore – Belgrade, Serbia

Thu 24 March – Mochvara – Zagreb, Croatia
Fri 25 March – Freakout Club – Bologna, Italy

Sat 26 March – Largo – Rome, Italy
Sun 27 March – Legend Club – Milan, Italy

Tue 29 March – Bogen F – Zurich, Switzeralnd
Wed 30 March – Backstage – Munich, Germany

Thu 31 March – Caves Du Memoir – Martigny, Switzeralnd

Fri 01 April – La Trabendo – Paris, France
Sat 02 April – Lafayette – London, UK
Mon 04 April – Kayka – Antwerp, Belgium
Tue 05 April – Gleis 22 – Munster, Germany
Wed 06 April – Melkweg – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Thu 07 April – Vera- Groningen, Netherlands
Sat 09 April – Hus 7 – Stockholm, Sweden
Sun 10 April – John Dee – Oslo, Norway
Mon 11 April – Pumpehuset – Copenhagen, Denmark

Tue 12 April Hole 44 – Berlin, Germany
Wed 13 April – MTC – Cologne, Germany

Watch: ‘Hold On Tight’ by A Place to Bury Strangers

Posted: 7 December 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Last month, A Place To Bury Strangers announced their sixth studio album, See Through You, out 4th February 2022 on Dedstrange, and shared its lead single ‘Let’s See Each Other’. Today, they return with ‘Hold On Tight’, a noise-pop ripper bursting with chaotic delirium.

The accompanying video, directed by Meriel O’Connell, sees bandleader Oliver Ackermann moonlighting as the concierge of New York’s most eccentric hotel. When a candlelit dinner suddenly turns into a lovers’ quarrel, Ackermann joins a mysterious lone patron (drummer Sandra Fedowitz) and maître d’ (bassist John Fedowitz) to bring the noise. “When the getting’s good, I hold on tight. Sometimes I forget to enjoy where I am and the people around me. It is critical to be thankful and enjoy existence and have fun. Having a bad night? Reflect and kick yourself into gear,” says Ackermann.

Watch the video here:

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Photo by Ebru Yildiz

Watch: ‘Let’s See Each Other’ by A Place To Bury Strangers

Posted: 17 November 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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A Place To Bury Strangers announce the release of their sixth album See Through You on 4th February 2022. It’s not just a return to form for the band, but also a return to their fiercely independent, DIY roots on their own label, Dedstrange.

Outpacing even their own firmly blazed path of audio annihilation, this 13-track album repeatedly delivers the massive walls of chaos and noise that A Place To Bury Strangers are renowned for. It’s an explosive journey that explores the listener’s limits of mind-bending madness, while simultaneously offering the catchiest batch of songs in the band’s discography. It’s a nod to the art school ethos of the band’s origins, while forging a new and clear direction forward.

The first single ‘Let’s See Each Other’ is an intimate and disarming love song from a forgotten future. Syncopated memories and deconstructed fantasies of lovers lost in a city that doesn’t know their names. The accompanying video, directed by David Pelletier, features the band destroying the song while imploring people to reunite.

Watch the video here:

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Photo by Ebru Yildiz

Bdrmm / crush – The Fulford Arms, York, 29th October 2021

Posted: 1 November 2021 in Live
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Christopher Nosnibor

The clue’s in the name: Bdrmm started out as a bedroom-based solo project for Ryan Smith in 2017, but soon transitioned to being a proper gigging band. Like so many bands, their progress was severely hampered by more than eighteen months of no live activity, something that seems to have hit bands in the early stages of their careers the hardest, since they rely on performing in grassroots venues and supporting larger bands to build their fanbase.

This was one of many shows that got booked, rescheduled, and rescheduled over the course of the last eighteen months, during which time they’ve maintained a steady flow of releases, including their debut album and an attendant set of remixes and a number of singles, which have clearly done no harm to their profile, garnering glowing reviews from across the spectrum from NME to MOJO via Line of Best Fit. The Fulford Arms, then – sold out, although still operating at reduced capacity for ticket sales – is pretty busy even early doors.

It’s an interesting demographic, too, probably around a 60/40 split of twenty-somethings and forty-somethings – which isn’t entire surprising given Bdrmm’s referencing of the music that the older fans were listening to when they were around the age of the younger ones.

Having just two bands on the bill works well – not only allowing time to ventilate the room between acts – but to give the punters and their ears a rest, time to recharge glasses without a crush at the bar, and an early finish. After so much time out, it might take some time to rebuild the stamina for late nights for a few of us, and for those slightly further afield, public transport isn’t what it was a couple of years ago (or more).

Manchester’s crush – another band who, having formed in 2018 have a lot of early-days ground to recover – are on first. I was pretty sure there have been other bands called Crush, and it was only later I recalled Donna Air and Jayni Hoy’s short-lived pop career and the early 90s project featuring John Valentine Carruthers (formerly of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and Killing Joke drummer Paul Ferguson . The young four-piece are nothing like either. The set makes a shuddering launch into mid-tempo post-rock shoegaze with two guitars. Their sound is reminiscent of melodic 90s indie with a dreamy style, but still some drive too. There’s lots of texture and occasional bursts of noise. They may be lacking that slickness that playing often develops, but they can really play, and the closer comes on like Dinosaur Jr being covered by Slowdive, and it’s ace.

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Crackling distortion yields to a driving motorik riff to announce the arrival of Bdrmm, and it’s immediately apparent that they’re a cut above, and that any hyp is entirely justified. The sound is immense. The drums are half-submerged beneath a heft wash of guitar. It’s a dense, throbbing, shimmering wall of sound. The percussion is a mix of traditional and electronic drum pads, and everything comes together magnificently. New single ‘Port’ drops early as the third song and it’s a brooding synth-driven beast, part My Bloody Valentine, but probably more A Place to Bury Strangers. There’s all the reverb, and all the volume: in fact the sound is great, and sound man Chris Tuke gets a deserved shoutout from the stage during the set. Because while it’s nice on record, and all the comparisons to Slowdive and early Ride are entirely appropriate, live, it really needs to be heard – and felt – at organ-trembling volume.

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‘Happy, is a synthy swirl meshed with a gritty bass, and as the set progresses, we see the band peeling off blistering sheets of noise. Bent over, guitars practically scraping the floor, they don’t only do shoegaze but they also properly rock out. Near the end of the set they treat us to an immense, slow-building crescendo climax worthy of I Like Trains.

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They leave us overheated, breathless, and stunned by the sheer power of the blistering noise of the guitars that howl and melt. No way should we have been able to experience this in a venue with a capacity of around 130, and I rather doubt we will again. Bdrmm are a Brudenell band at the very least: they have not only the songs, but that indefinable ‘fuck yeah!’ quality that comes from the wild exhilaration of seeing a band who simply blow you away.

A Place to Bury Strangers: ‘Hologram: Destroyed & Disassembled’ EP; tour dates and new video

Posted: 15 September 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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A Place To Bury Strangers announce ‘Hologram: Destroyed & Disassembled,’ a Record Store Day Black Friday exclusive out 26th November 26th on Dedstrange. Their Hologram EP is deconstructed and expanded into a 13-track album featuring mind-altering remixes by Daniel Fox of Girl Band, Penelope Isles, Do Nothing, BODEGA, Weeping Icon, Ganser, Grimoose, The Bodies Obtained, bandmates Ceremony East Coast plus Dedstrange label mates Jealous, Data Animal, Plattenbau, and Randy Randall of No Age. Vinyl will be available at your local record store on Black Friday. Visit www.recordstoreday.com for more details.

They’re also sharing a new music video for ‘Playing the Part’ directed by Heather Bickford to celebrate the vinyl release of Hologram.

As noisy as they can be, there’s true prettiness in the APTBS sound. Sometimes it’s buried in the hypnotic mixes, and sometimes, it’s right there on the surface. ‘Playing The Part’ is one of the most winsome things the group has ever recorded — it’s got a glorious guitar tone, an active, melodic bass line, and a graceful vocal from Ackermann that could legitimately be called sweet. Director Heather Bickford has matched the song with a video that underscores its beauty, and its strangeness, too. Bickford, who also stars in the clip, shoots Ackermann in a historic house in Flagstaff, Arizona that looks like something out of a reverie: there’s antique wallpaper, stained glass windows, curio cabinets stuffed with bone china, landscape paintings in gilded frames, and velvet drapes over the bed. Microphone in hand, thoroughly bewitched, animated by the enchantment of his surroundings, Ackermann slips into a dream.

Bickford elaborates: “‘Playing the Part’ was shot in Flagstaff, Arizona, on Oliver’s birthday, while Ollie and I were on a little getaway last November. He had actually proposed to me the day before while we were at Zion National Park so we were in a dream-like state of mind. Shot in a historic home, the vintage decor and wallpaper provided the perfect backdrop for the video."

Watch ‘Playing The Part’ here:

A Place To Bury Strangers 2022 North American Tour Dates – Tickets on sale here

Wed. September 15 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom $
Mon. October 11 – New Orleans, LA @ Civic Theatre *
Tue. October 12 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre *
Wed. October 13 – Raleigh, NC @ Ritz *
Thur. October 14 – Washington, DC @ Anthem *
Fri. October 29 – Austin, TX @ Levitation Festival
Tue. February 1 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s #
Wed. February 2 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz #
Fri. February 4 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace #
Sat. February 5 – Detroit, MI @ El Club #
Sun. February 6 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Mon. February 7 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club #
Tue. February 8 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Ave. 7th Street Entry #
Fri. February 11 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos %
Sat. February 12 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios %
Sun. February 13 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre %
Tue. February 15 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel %
Wed. February 16 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom %
Fri. February 18 – San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar %
Sat. February 19 – Tucson, AZ @ Hotel Congress %
Tue. February 22 – Denver, CO @  Larimer Lounge %
Wed. February 23 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck %
Fri. February 25 – Nashville, TN @ The High Watt %

* with Future Islands
$ with Maxband & Wah Together
# with Glove
% with TV Priest

A Place To Bury Strangers 2022 European Tour Dates – Tickets on sale now

Wed 09 March – Hafenklang – Hamburg, Germany  

Thu 10 March – Beatpol – Dresden, Germany

Fri 11 March – Klub Poglos – Warsaw, Poland

Sat 12 March – Futurum – Prague, Czech Republic
Sun 13 March – Randal Club – Bratislava, Slovakia

Mon 14 March – Durer Kert – Budapest, Hungary

Wed 16 March – Control Club – Bucharest, Romania

Thu 17 March – Mixtape5 – Sofia, Bulgaria
Fri 18 March – Eightball – Thessaloniki, Greece

Sat 19 March – Temple – Athens, Greece
Mon 21 March – 25th of May Hall – Skopje, Macedonia

Tue 22 March – Club Drugstore – Belgrade, Serbia

Thu 24 March – Mochvara – Zagreb, Croatia
Fri 25 March – Freakout Club – Bologna, Italy

Sat 26 March – Largo – Rome, Italy
Sun 27 March – Legend Club – Milan, Italy

Tue 29 March – Bogen F – Zurich, Switzeralnd
Wed 30 March – Backstage – Munich, Germany

Thu 31 March – Caves Du Memoir – Martigny, Switzeralnd

Fri 01 April – La Trabendo – Paris, France
Sat 02 April – Lafayette – London, UK
Mon 04 April – Kayka – Antwerp, Belgium
Tue 05 April – Gleis 22 – Munster, Germany
Wed 06 April – Melkweg – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Thu 07 April – Vera- Groningen, Netherlands
Sat 09 April – Hus 7 – Stockholm, Sweden
Sun 10 April – John Dee – Oslo, Norway
Mon 11 April – Pumpehuset – Copenhagen, Denmark

Tue 12 April Hole 44 – Berlin, Germany
Wed 13 April – MTC – Cologne, Germany

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The Cold Field – Hollows

Posted: 19 August 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Cold Transmission Music – 6th August 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, an album grabs you in just a matter of bars: The Cold Field’s Hollows is one of those rare records. Instinctively, the swathes of glacial synth draped over insistent, crisp and dominant drumming and paired with brittle, fractal guitars are pure Disintegration. So then it all cam down to the question of the vocals: would they spoil it? It’s a common thing, especially with goth bands. Musically, it’s on-point, but then there’s some bozo who can’t carry a tune in a bucket comes on like a cross between a baritone Morrissey and Kermit and ruins it. Not so here: Cold Field’s vocals are low in the mix and heavily processed, adding to the atmosphere and the mood, and it’s more Seventeen Seconds in terms of mix and it works so well.

As the press release details, ‘Conceived when hospitalized, songwriter and producer Ian Messenger wrote and produced a prolific forty-odd dark-minded songs the following year, of which ten were chosen for Hollows… Depressive themes of gloom and emptiness pervade the album but there is also a triumph against the darkness, a fist-waving into the void, and intimacy along with detachment.’

Drum machines and reverb are, I’ve found, the most precise routes to articulating darkness and detachment. It’s all in the way the drum machine strips away the human heart from the sound and the process, and reverb creates distance and separation. While most rock / metal-leaning genres shun drum machines (with notable exceptions including Big Black, Metal Urbain, Pitch Shifter and Godflesh, who harnessed the potential for immense power and relentless drive through sequenced beats), goth has embraced and run with it thanks largely to the way The Sisters of Mercy and The March Violets really took a grasp on how a tight bass welded to a mechanical rhythm has an effect that’s more or less hardwired. You don’t choose to dig this – it hooks you and becomes your life.

Hollows is faultless not only in its absorption and assimilation, but in its quality of songcrafting and performance.

‘Endless Ending’ ratchets up the mechanized bleakness, a full-on gonzoid goth groove, the guitars and synths blur together in an FX-laden wash while the bass drives hard against that non-stop, full-free rhythm that just thumps away hard. ‘Beauty—Expired’ is a bleak barnstormer, melding The Jesus and Mary Chain’s overloading guitars with the rockist tendencies of James Ray’s Gangwar with the psychedelia of A Place to Bury Strangers.

‘You Walk Away’ is more overtly electro, more New Order, but then again, with the heavy twang of a reverby guitar and blank monotone vocal, it’s Movement that it references above anything else, meaning it’s stark, bleak, and strangely affecting. It’s perhaps hard to explain without some sort of context or background, or a priori knowledge. You’re either in the headspace, or you’re not, but if you are, the you’ll know. And this speaks to that space, whether it’s comfortable or not.

The final track, ‘Into the Light’ stands out for its buoyancy, and the nagging guitar break again leans heavily on New Order – specifically ‘Ceremony’. But when executed with such panache, there’s no way to criticise this or any aspect of Hollows. It may be 2021, but this is an album that belongs to the early 80s. and in its mood, its atmosphere, its production, Hollows absolutely nails it.

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