Aural Aggravation

16th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

After a lengthy and sustained spell of creativity, dark Devonshire band Abrasive Trees are taking stock, reflecting and consolidating on their achievements to date, something which also affords newcomers an opportunity to catch up, March saw the release of Epocha, a compilation album which gathered their singles and EPs from 2019-2021, and now, housed in a sleeve which continues the thread of the design of its predecessor, they offer up a live album, which captures the band performing at hatch Barn, a venue close to their base in Totnes.

Live albums are notoriously tricky. So many live acts have an energy live that simply doesn’t translate when recorded. Then, at the opposite end of the spectrum, I recall meeting a metalhead in my first few weeks of university who was gushing in his enthusiasm for Iron Maiden “T’ Maiden” as he referred to them as being an amazing live as because “it sounds just like ont’ album”. This stuck with me, because I wasn’t accustomed to such thick Northern accents back then, and also because the idea of a live show so slick it sounded like the CD was a cause for consternation. Some people may think it’s a good thing, of course, but for me – even at the age of nineteen – it seemed to be missing the point of playing live. Especially when it’s a big band, who you’re likely to be watching on screens instead of looking at the stage. Might as well be watching a video at home for that.

Then there’s the recording itself: too much audience and it sounds like a shitty bootleg that’s as much that gobby tosser and his mate yammering away over the band; too hermetic and soundesky and it sounds dead and like there was no-one there, and all the vitality of the live experience is lost. This six-track release, once again mastered by Mark Beazely of Rothko, is magnificently realised: the sound is superbly crisp and clear – it’s obviously taken from the sound desk – but there’s a hum and a sense of space and audience, and it isn’t so clinical as to sound like another studio recording.

There’s irony in the title here: the live experience exists only in the moment, but here we are with a documents which gives us that second moment of existence. But of course, this is not the thing in itself, but a recreation, which captures only a part of it. Dimensions are missing: the sights, the ambience, and so on. This gives us not the full give experience, but an aural document of the band’s performance alone. They know this. We know this.

Four of the six tracks here are featured on Epocha in their studio forms, but the two mid-set songs, ‘Kali Sends Sunflowers’ and ‘Moulding Heaven With Earth’ are from the post-Epocha double-A-side single, and ‘Moulding Heaven With Earth’ is extended here from its near-six-minute form to almost eight her, making for a colossal centrepiece to the half-hour long set. Over its duration, the band sound solid, and assured, and they bring the detail of the studio recordings to their live show, with added dynamics and energy – the bass and drums in particular when they hit peak crescendo cut through in the way that only ever really happens live, and so it’s a credit that this release captures that energy.

The set opens with ‘Before’ from the Now You Are Not Here EP, and while abridged from its original six-and-a-half-minute sprawl to just three and a half, it conjures a magnificently atmospheric space, with chiming guitars, drifting ambient synth drones, hand-drums, and brooding sax, not to mention Easter-inspired vocalisations to build tension, and it segues into the ornate and delicate ‘Now You Are Not Here’ from the same EP, introducing vocals to the set, and finding the band at their most dramatic, evoking the quintessential goth sound from circa 1985-86. Mattthew Rochford’s voice quavers and you really feel as if you’re with him, teetering at the of the world… before the chorus-soaked maelstrom descends.

The soft swell of clean, reverby guitar on ‘Kali Sends Flowers’ is so very reminiscent of Wayne Hussey it sends an unexpected pang of nostalgia, echoing as it does both ‘Severina’ and the intro to ‘Deliverance’. But instead of Wayne’s overt drawing on Christianity in his lyrics, Abrasive Trees delve into other belief systems, and crash into some bold crescendos in the process.

The samples on ‘Moulding Heaven With Earth’ are studio-clear, without sounding at odds with the mix of the music itself, while the near note-perfect ‘Replenishing Water’ breathes deeper as the guitars burst through the air and it explodes into a monumental extended climax that’s absolutely killer and one hundred percent exhilarating. There is so much energy and life here. There is not much vocal, and for some reason this often takes me by surprise.

There isn’t much chat either, but then, on the evidence of this recording, Abrasive Trees’ set relies on building and maintaining tension rather than rapport.

‘Bound for an Infinite Sea’ begins with the crescendo and drives hard to an energetic, bass-driven finale, Rochford’s voice brimming with emotion – and delving into gloom before soaring into gripping tension – and it’s all of this and more that makes Nothing Exists for a Second Moment so great. It’s almost as if you were there, and very much wish you were, but Nothing Exists for a Second Moment achieves the rare feat of making you feel something almost like having been there, slipping a subliminal buzz in the process… It’s as close to a second moment as possible.

AA