Posts Tagged ‘Atmospheric’

David Toop & Lawrence English – The Shell That Speaks The Sea

Posted: 4 June 2023 in Albums
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Room40 – 2nd June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve been engrossed by Lawrence English’s works for some years now, and my appreciation of him and his methods were only enhanced when I conducted an interview with him about ten years ago for a now-defunct site (so many are now: the idea that once online it’s there forever has been proven false, and we’re all sitting, bewildered by as rapidly-vanishing archive of the recent past), where we touched on cut-ups and William Burroughs and I was struck by the depth of his knowledge and references.

But I have grave concerns around future history, or the future of history. While the move to digital was hailed as a move toward permanence, incorruptibility, the opposite has proved true. No-one writes anything down anymore, no-one produces additional. tape copies. If your hard-drive gets fucked, so does your entire library. The Cloud? Do you even know where it is? Does it even exist?

While we reflect on this, let us also consider this album and its slow gestation. David Toop is another artist I’ve spent some time listening to, and writing about, including his Breathing Spirit Forms three-way collaboration with Akio Suzuki and Lawrence English, but this is the first time just the pair of them have worked together, and Lawrence explains its evolution as follows: ‘Over the years, David and I have shared an interest in both the material and immaterial implications of sound (amongst other things). Moreover we’ve connected many times on matters which lies at the fringes of how we might choose to think about audition, our interests seeking in the affective realm that haunts, rather than describes, experience. The Shell That Speaks The Sea very much resonates from this shared fascination… I’m not exactly sure when we first mooted this duet, but I sense its initial trace is now more than a decade ago. I tend to live by the motto of ‘right place, right time’ and I believe David likely also subscribes to this methodology. A couple of years ago, David and I reignited the duet conversation and began exchanging materials. As a jumping off point, I explored a series of field recordings that, for me at least, captured something of this affective haunting that I mentioned previously’.

And haunting it is: ghosts of memories and fragments of half-recollections lurk and loom amidst the thick, dark shadows forged by the unsettling sounds. The title suggests an album of soft ambient washes, a gentle tidal swash, a soothing, tranquil work. It is not.

‘Abyssal Tracker’ is remarkably atmospheric in a sparse, gloomy, sense, and provides a fitting introduction to the duo’s idiosyncratic work, compiling sighs and vocal rasps over elongated strains of feedback and a suffocating atmosphere. Shrill shrieks echo out over eerie notes and a scratching insectoid clamour in the trebly range. Thuds ripple beneath the surface: there is so much texture and detail here, you find yourself looking about nervously, seeking the various sources and to see what’s over your shoulder, or hovering above your head.

Clanks and clatters and clanks and thuds are the dominant features of this album, and is lasers fire into the abyss of emptiness on the dense and disturbing ‘Reading Bones’, which scratches and scrapes, while there are earth-churning low-range disturbances – and words, but they’re indecipherable, spoken in low, whispering grunts, and it’s impossible to decipher even the language, sounding as it does like an ancient incantation.

It’s not all quite so skin-pricklingly tense, but much of it is: ‘Mouth Cave’ is dark, dank, low and rumbling, but has textures and what sounds like the trickle of running water spattering in the background amidst the cavernous gloom, and if ‘Whistling in the Dark’ sounds like a simplistic description, it’s accurate – but also suspenseful, scary and bordering on horror tropes; the whistling is deranged and floats through a heavy, crackling doomy drone. There are more ominous mutterings amidst the creeping darkness of ‘The Chair’s Story’, which feels like casting a look back through the ages through a thick fog at scenes of torture and pain and great sorrow and forward, to a laser-bleeping future.

As I seem to be prone to lately, I found myself nodding through fatigue but also, simultaneously, tense and alert during The Shell That Speaks The Sea, an album which possesses vast sonic expanses and a bleak, oppressive atmosphere. Each track offers something different, and this only accentuates the ‘otherness’ of the music this album contains; it’s like walking through a series of disturbing dreams, whereby each scene presents a new unfamiliar setting, and there are hints of BBC Radiophonic Workshop and vintage sci-fi about this incredibly imaginative work.

It may have taken a long time to piece together, but the results make the labour more than worthwhile.

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Listen: ‘Time’ by Magic Wands

Posted: 2 May 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Magic Wands is a US dark pop outfit originally formed in Nashville by guitarists & vocalists Chris and Dexy Valentine, but now based in Los Angeles where they have been joined by drummer Pablo Amador. Their name stems from the gift of a wand from Chris to Dexy when they first started making music together while still living on opposite sides of the country.

The group have released three albums over the last decade on which they have refined a shimmering and cosmic dream-pop sound that incorporates elements of shoegaze, post-punk and goth. Textured guitars, droning synths and delicate, ethereal vocals combine to create an otherworldly atmosphere.

Armed with songs that have often been praised on both sides of the Atlantic for their euphoric quality, especially in live performance, the trio themselves have remained dedicated to creating music that is both imaginative and emotionally engaging. They have developed a loyal fanbase drawn to their ability to create a sense of mysticism and wonder through their music.

Magic Wands have shared stages with the likes of Radiohead, Slowdive, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Horrors, Deerhunter, The Kills and The Black Keys. They also played their own headlining tours of the UK and mainland Europe in 2017-18.

Having released a single in late March entitled ‘Joy’, the group have now followed it with ‘Time’. Complemented with a pair of remixes apiece, both are also included on Switch, a brand new album set for release on 12th May by Metropolis Records.

Listen to ‘Time’ here:

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Watch: ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’ by Dødheimsgard

Posted: 16 March 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Following the announcement of their forthcoming album Dødheimsgard return with their exceptional first single ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’. The ten minutes plus track weaves a sombre tapestry incorporating elements of multiple sub genres in the world of Extreme Metal and thematically tackles ideas of epistemological dualism.

Regarding the single Vicotnik had the following to say:

“The whole album revolves subjectively around perception, experience, psychology, objective/subjective reality vs external pressure, tropes, taboos, the laws of motion/causality which influences one’s life. The subjective perception of reality vs the objective causal effects of reality and how they are bound interact. Epistemological dualism.”

Vicotnik continues:

“I guess mental health, or rather instead of health, let’s call it mental condition is a big topic on this record. Not as in a complaining way, or as a good or bad notion, but rather a subject’s study of his own psychology (en)during everything.

Like the ambiguity of Being. What is Being? Is it a meta-physical stratum of subjective emotionally fuelled notions or is Being just explaining a physical object that is, therefore being. Epistemologically I guess these lyrics dwell a lot on naïve realism vs representational realism. Cognitivism vs behaviourism, and then bringing it all to an artist context obviously. So, it is experiential renditioning, not solution driven.”

Accompanying the single is a video and single cover art from visionary artist Costin Chiorenau who brings the disparate and incredibly solemn existence of ‘Black Medium Current’s first single to life. Working together both the song and the video evolve over the course of the ten-minute run time to create something truly visionary both in a sonic and visual context. Costin elaborates on the video below:

“I’ve been following Dødheimsgard for 20 years now, and the genius of Vicotnik always captured my highest focus, being at the same time a huge inspiration, both musically and aesthetically. I always perceived Dødheimsgard being more as an artistic movement than a black metal band, another aspect which excites my creativity and I feel fulfilled that I could express all this passion through the ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’ art video and single cover.”

He continues: “When I first heard it, I felt that void left behind by the desperation of the root-sense of old structures of perception. That void, which shakes the black matter foundation every time when manifestations tuned with and born in the past overleap the fresh sight of the present which fights hard to penetrate the dense walls of repetition. The main characters of this movie are the absence created by the vanishing old, the observer in search of a new fitting cloth of identity for its avatar and the desperate need of giving shape to the yet-not assimilated nor understood living new.

Secondary characters are different types of glitches in the matrix between self-imposed reality and the golden mean dream state, measuring systems for various types of space found between the layers of perception and the omnipresent shadow. These characters are interfering one with another in a multiverse of contrasts between defined and undefined, forming a brick-dust flavoured whole, at times exotic, at times smoked in bitter nihil. These characters are also the topics spoken but the energy of this song, by the voice of now and I consider the proper ones to be dissected through art.”

Watch the video here:

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Abrasive Trees – Epocha

Posted: 10 March 2023 in Albums
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10th March 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Epocha gathers together Abrasive Trees’ output from 2019-2021 – a brief but pivotal period for the band released four singles and EPs which found them evolving and solidifying their sound. They’ve been variously described as Post-Punk/Post-Rock/Post-Folk and permutations thereof, and all of these elements are in the mix in a style that has gothic – but not explicitly ‘goth’ overtones across the course of the nine tracks gathered here.

Although ostensibly a five-piece centred around Matthew Rochford in their current incarnation, these recordings feature a host of contributors, notably Mark Beazley of Rothko and Band of Holy Joy, who was also involved in elements of production, mixing, and mastering the tracks, and among others. It’s perhaps because of what these individuals bring, both in terms of playing style and instrumentation – with cello, e-bow, organ, and dulcimer among the array of instruments which augment the standard setup off bass, drums, and guitar.

The fact that the songs aren’t simply presented chronologically – and remixes have been omitted – does give this disc a more the feel of an album set than a compilation, and this makes for a journey-like listening experience.

The album opens with ‘Bound for an Infinite Sea’, the lead track of the EP bearing the same title from September 2020, and the chiming guitarline is reminiscent of The Nephilim era Fields of the Nephilim, and sets the expansive atmospheric tone that defines the sound of Abrasive Trees.

While there are vocals, they feature sparingly, rippling up between the lengthy instrumental sections. On ‘Replenishing Water’, this manifests as a percussion led swirling psych groove, whereas elsewhere, as on the slow, hypnotic ‘Before’, the vibe is rather more spaced-out and trippy, and there’s certainly an experimental, almost-jam-based aspect to the music in places.

Predominantly, though, there’s a contemplative, brooding nature that seeps through the rich yet subtle arrangements, and at times, in the folkier parts, I’m reminded of Last Harbour (granted, not a comparison that will likely leap out to many, but so often the best bands are underrated and under the radar). The dark, moody ‘Alone in the World’ is eerie, haunting, and other-worldly.

In pulling together these recordings, released variously on cassette, vinyl, and hand—packaged CD, one would hope that Abrasive Trees will find new converts, even if there are only 100 copies of this CD-only release – if its existence steers people to the digital versions of the original, then it’s all to the good, although it has to be said, as a fan of physical media, Epocha is a lovely item, as well as a well-realised document of the band’s first phase.

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(Image links to Bandcamp)

Watch: ‘Eye Witness’ by Me Lost Me

Posted: 2 March 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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ME LOST ME led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent announces a new album RPG via Upset The Rhythm on 7th July, and is touring across the UK including support dates with Pigs x7 (dates and details here). RPG (recorded in Blank Studios with Sam Grant of Pigs x7) is ME LOST ME’s fourth outing as a collective, having transitioned from an ambitious solo project in 2017, Jayne now regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope.

ME LOST ME delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully weave together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music. Hauntological in part, RPG is concerned with tales and with time – are we running out of it? Does insomnia cause a time loop? Do the pressures of masculinity prevent progress? Jayne Dent asks these questions and more on RPG, her homage to worldbuilding and the story as an artform, calling back to those oral traditions around a campfire, as well as modern day video games – bringing folk music into the present day as she does so.

Watch the video here:

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Photo credit: Amelia Read Photography

Open to the Sea – Tales from an Underground River

Posted: 20 February 2023 in Albums
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25th November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Two years on from when I covered Open to the Sea’s Another Year Is Over, it transpires that Milan-based Matteo Uggeri and his cohorts are back with Tales from an Underground River. A lot has happened since then – and yet in many ways, not a lot has, and for some of us, it feels as if lockdown never ended.

Governments and employers seem to be content to peddle the idea that with vaccines rolled out and restrictions lifted, the switch had been flicked that restores normality – so much for the endless talk of a new normal not so long ago. This is likely true of some things, primarily retail and public services, but then, many office workers have only returned on a part-time basis, if at all. For me, personal circumstances have meant not at all, which is welcome – much as I miss people, I don’t miss those people.

I digress, but this context is what I bring in terms of my reception to this album, which was, recorded over the course of a couple of years, starting in the Winter of 2019 and spanning the pandemic period – a time that has drifted into near-unreality and feels almost dreamlike, unreal. And this is very much the sensation that Tales from an Underground River creates. Listening to it feels like listening to a dream.

The text which accompanies the release, they’re at pains to point out, is not a press sheet, but a diary, and that makes sense, as it charts the album’s long and convoluted evolution. It certainly isn’t a sales pitch. But then, art shouldn’t be about sales pitches: creatively, the journey to the end result – if indeed it even is the end result – is far more interesting, and of significantly more value.

Beginning life as two long and multi-layered sets of improvisation with piano, guitar and synths recorded by Enrico Coniglio, it was then completely reworked by a process of additions and subtractions by Matteo Uggeri, and over time, incrementally, it was picked apart and broken down into thirteen relatively short pieces, where soft, rolling piano and mournful brass merge with the sounds of thunder and rain and a host off subtle field recordings which add delicate layers to the sound. And they’re segued together in such a way as to render the album one continuous piece in a succession of movements.

The mood transitions incrementally through the segments, and the titles are beautifully descriptive: I found myself forming mental images of scenes while listening, the music providing the soundtrack to a slowly unfurling movie in my mind’s eye – a movie brimming with scenes of nature, as ‘Pebbles Clink, Fluffy Echoes Make the Air Colder’ and ‘Pebbles Clink, Fluffy Echoes Make the Air Colder.’

Indeed, reading the lengthy titles in sequence conjures a semi-narrative in itself. At times ponderous, contemplative, brooding, at others with flickering sun offering hope – sometimes within the space of a single piece, as on ‘Limpid Lights Dig Words in the Rocks’, you feel yourself carried on a current through different terrains and landscapes. ‘Emotions and Thoughts Climb over Years and Years, Always the Same’ brings droning guitar textures and a rather darker hue of ambience with post-rock leanings, and Tales from an Underground River is an album where the movement and changes never cease over the course of its journey. At times eerie and unsettling, at times ominous, and at others – for wont of a better word – cheerful, it’s a magical piece of creativity that shows vision and was very much worth the three years of work.

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Listen: ‘Creep’ by Midas Fall

Posted: 12 February 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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As anyone who ever listened to the legendary BBC radio DJ John Peel will know, hearing a favourite artist re-interpret a familiar song by another artist can bring new insights into both, as well as being a lot of fun.

During a break from writing Midas Fall’s fifth album, Elizabeth Heaton took some ideas that had been incubating for a while and, along with bandmate Michael Hamilton, applied their own unique perspective to three well-loved songs by Bruce Springsteen (Dancing in the Dark), Radiohead (Creep) and Placebo (Every You Every Me).

Covers EP sees Springsteen’s driving rock anthem reimagined as a quieter, more introspective narrative, imbued with ‘80s synths and Heaton’s softly hopeful but uncertain vocals. Radiohead’s Creep is a dreamy, kaleidoscopic waltz that slowly builds to a raging climax. On Every You Every Me, the icy undertones of Placebo’s original version are magnified even further, evoking a bleak landscape cloaked in dark, haunting sounds.

For first single ‘Creep’ Liz from the band states,  “Creep, along with the other tracks on the upcoming EP were created during lockdown. We took some of our favourite tracks from growing up and gave them a different feel. As a teenager Radiohead were the first band to make me feel that music could be something more, so have been a massive influence to me musically, especially when I first started writing. I was listening to Creep and imagined it played in a waltz style time signature. With the aid of my keyboard and a glass of wine the vocals seemed to flow very easily and were captured in a single take. From there it grew arms and legs."

Listen here:

Covers EP will be released digitally worldwide by Monotreme Records on 7th April.

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Listen: ‘Kröflueldar’ by Altari

Posted: 3 February 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Fire and brimstone from Icelandic Black Metal band Altari, as their volcanic new album Kröflueldar erupts via Svart Records on 14 April 2023. Named after a series of eruptions that happened at Krafla in Iceland in 1975, Kröflueldar represents the constant threat of ash that Altari’s music lives under. Kröflueldar was a 9 year series of eruptions, and since the album took almost 9 years to create, Altari felt that it was a fitting title for their scalding and ferocious music.

Fans of Craft, Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord and the more well known Icelandic Black Metal bands like Misþyrming and Sinmara will revel in digging into Kröflueldar’s rotten soil, but there is something far more experimental and avant-garde to be reaped within the whirlwind of sound that Altari produces. With their foundations of sound in the classic eras of early Judas Priest, songs like Leðurblökufjandinn call to mind the discordant soundclash of bands like Voivod, Virus and even Sonic Youth in the interplay of melody and disharmony. The bewildering, but utterly charming frenzy of taking the raw sound of metal to the limits breaks through from Altari’s literal geological location in a landscape in constant upheaval. Guitarist and Vocalist Ó.Þ.Guðjónsson notes that; “bands such as Blue Öyster Cult, Interpol, Killing Joke were a big inspiration for us as well for the use of clean guitars as the sound for leads. I expressed a desire to find some balance between the overdriven rhythm and melodic yet clean leads. These bands helped us find that.”

It is through these uncommon and almost blasphemous influences that Altari proves to be a rare gem in the much vaulted Icelandic Black Metal crown, giving Kröflueldar the dna of a band that feels they have so much potential and fervor brewing up in their molten kiln. Tracks like Sýrulúður with the vocals of Gyða Margrét are as delicate and subtle, cloaked in smoky atmosphere, as they are dark and brooding, giving hints of bands like This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins.

When Guðjónsson states that the intention was an “overall desire for us to get away from the sound that has been a gateway for others here in the scene” they imbued Kröflueldar with a beguiling essence that’s hard to pin down, but magnetically unique.

Listen to the title track here:

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Gjerstad / Moberg / Nilssen-Love – Time Sound Shape

Posted: 17 December 2022 in Albums
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PNL Records – 16th December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Nice… as you’d probably expect from this three-way collaboration, Time Sound Shape is a work of atmospheric instrumental experimentalism with some strong jazz leanings. That’s not smooth or mellow jazz, of course: more the weirdy, spaced-out non-musical kind of jazz. So not so much nice, as awkward, uncomfortable, challenging. This is not jazz of the cardigan and slippers variety, and you certainly wouldn’t play it at a dinner party, apart from perhaps at thee point when your remaining guests have overstayed their welcome and you want them to fuck off home.

Time Sound Shape is a single continuous piece with a running time of a full-length album, clocking in at precisely forty-nine minutes, and it’s a great example of intuitive improvisational collaborative work, and it sounds far better than the clunky text-based cover art suggests.

There are some dissonant, discordant, even outright difficult to digest crescendos, and moments of queasy chamber orchestral meanderings, as they tweet and toot together in a sort of droning solidarity. It begins gently enough, with some trilling woodwind courtesy of Frode Gjerstad who brings flute, and clarinet to the party as well as sax, but it doesn’t take long before things shift in numerous different directions.

There are moments that almost feel ‘continental’ in vibe, perhaps not least of all on account of Kalle Moberg’s accordion work. And all the while, Paal Nilssen-Love brings texture and atmosphere with his application of a wide selection of Paiste gongs, bringing doomy dolorous chimes and rolling thunder. At times, the crashing gongs are strong enough to vibrate the internal organs within the ribcage.

In many respects, Time Sound Shape delivers precisely what you would expect from these three musicians coming together, and yet at the same time, it brings more. It’s a richly textured work, that evolves as it progresses, and it never stays stull, and yet the changes are often subtle. Time drifts and bends as the sounds transition, changing shape. Let yourself be carried.

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Clara Engel – Their Invisible Hands

Posted: 21 November 2022 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 2nd December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Seems I’ve blinked and missed a while slew of releases from Ontario experimentalist Clara Engel since writing about Hatching Under the Stars in the spring of 2020. Then again, the spring of 2020 doesn’t so much feel like a lifetime ago, as much as it does another life. Released on 5th April 2020, we were only just over a week into the first lockdown here in England, and we had no sense of what was to come.

As the blurb outlines, the album was ‘recorded entirely at home / solo’ and ‘Their Invisible Hands presents 13 tracks of subtle dream-like beauty… A mystical work, mixing classical and dark folk wanderings with misty soundscapes, which creates an abstract, new world atmosphere.’ Self-released in April digitally and on CD, Cruel Nature are giving it a cassette release.

In a way, returning to Clara’s work now is a powerful, and grounding experience. What has happened in the space between? Everything…and nothing. As they explain in the accompanying text, replicated on their Bandcamp, “I’m not writing the same song over and over so much as writing one long continuous song that will end when I die.”

If the last couple of years or so have reminded us of anything, it’s our mortality. And the sound of Their Invisible Hands is both spiritual and earthy. To unpack that, the sparse instrumentation, which consists predominantly of creening woodwind, chiming, picked strings, and hand percussion, has a simple, primitive aspect to it, and the slow, rhythmic undulations are attuned to elements of nature, as grounded as the act of breathing. ‘Dead Tree March’ is exemplary, a long, expansive drone that pulses in and out, repetitively, hypnotically, a sparse guide to a meditation.

Engel’s vocals, meanwhile, are ethereal and other-worldly, with a primal folk leaning that moves effortlessly between narrative and incantation, both of which tap into that subconscious part of the mind that it seems only music and nature can reach.

These themes of nature and of the ancient, of thoughts and tales lost in time, are constants in Engel’s work, giving credence to their comment about writing one long continuous song. In this context, it’s easy to see their entire catalogue as an interrogation and exploration of a quite specific field. Engel’s world is one full of magic and mystery, cryptids and magic beans and magnificent birds which sing. These songs are steeped in atmosphere and wonderment.

‘Ginko’s Blues’ is perhaps the most overtly classical piece on the album, a sparse composition led by picked acoustic guitar that calls to mind a stretched, dispersed rendition of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, as it’s slowly dragged into a sea of scratched strings and gauze-like reverb.

Dissecting Their Invisible Hands too hard is to misunderstand its nature. It’s not an album to pick apart for the various elements, or even to comprehend its structures, origins, or meanings: any attempt to do so is to demystify its resonance. ‘It’s all fun and games ‘till somebody shows you their heart.. on a platter on a stake on a riverbed rusted…’ they sing on ‘High Alien Priest’. The metaphorical and the literal blur unsettlingly.

You shiver and find yourself mute as Engel leads you through an array of evocative soundscapes. All you can do is let go, and to explore them.

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