Posts Tagged ‘Brooding’

Metamorph – HEX

Posted: 18 March 2024 in Reviews, Albums
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Distortion Productions – 8th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Metamorph have made their way onto these virtual pages a couple of times with previous single releases, most recently ‘Witchlit’ just over a year ago to the day as I write this. And, it turns out, this single was the very long lead-in for this long-player, which comprises seven new tracks which follow ‘Witchlit’, augmented by three remixes.

I’m going to park the remixes to save retreading territory that’s growing tedious and focus on the album proper, which kicks off in solid style with the pumping dark disco of ‘Veridia’ which blends surging dance pulsations with 90s enigma music and a dash of eastern mysticism to conjure a compelling hybrid or esoteric origins that lands with a dancefloor-friendly immediacy and energetic beat and throbbing bassline – and packs it all into just two pumping minutes.

There’s a lot to be said for starting an album strong and going straight in and hitting hard over the slow-build, and in today’s attention-deprived climate, it really does seem like the way to go – and Metamorph nail it here. They want your attention, and they’re bold about it.

‘Witchlit’ is up next, and it’s perfectly placed as a shimmering slice of dark electropop, sultry but lively, like Siouxsie gone electro. This is Metapmorph at their best – haunting, gothy, a little bit twisted. The title track crashes in next, bursting with flamboyant Europop vibes counterbalanced by darker shades – and once again, they pack it all into two and a half minutes.

Casting an eye down the tracklist, the majority of the songs on HEX are under three minutes in duration, and the album showcases a real economy of songwriting – no expansive mid-sections, no extravagant solos. They really do keep it tight.

‘Woo Woo’ is perhaps the album’s weakest track , not only with its mundane lyrics – ‘I won’t lie / I’m gonna get real high’ and unimaginative efforts to be sexy – but its wholesale immersion in commercial pop stylings. It feels like a stab at mainstream accessibility which is beneath them and isn’t particularly successful; in contrast, the mid-tempo brooder, ‘Raining Roses’ is brimming with dark, doomed romanticism , and ‘Broken Dolly’ borders on industrial and steps over the edge into a darker shade of darkness. ‘Wasteland Witch’ is well placed, a glammy industrial stomper that pumps up the tempo just when it’s all getting a bit dark and moody.

‘Whore Spider’, the last album track proper, could reasonably describes as an electropop anthem – mid-tempo, building, and unexpectedly hooky, while unexpectedly bringing back the wild woodwind. You can almost smell the incense as it spirals thickly to its finale.

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Abrasive Trees – Nothing Exists for a Second Moment

Posted: 18 July 2023 in Albums
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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.

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Sleep Kicks – The Afterdrop

Posted: 17 March 2023 in Albums
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17th March 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

In the feast or famine equation, there’s rarely a true drought when it comes to quality new releases, but this month really does seem to be one for an eye-popping proliferation, and the arrival of Sleep Kicks’ debut album after a succession of singles and EPs is a most welcome arrival along them.

Having previously showcased – and raved about – previous releases, it’s a joy to see The Afterdrop finally land. Most of those previous singles – ‘My On Demon’, ‘No Chains’, ‘Hall of Shame’, ‘Neptune’’, and, most recently, ‘Words in Vain’ are featured here, along with a different recording of ‘Exodus’ from the one that appeared on the Summer EP back in July 2020. It’s marked as an edit, which makes me curious to hear the full-length version performed as a full band.

Having frothed and foamed exuberantly about the band’s melding of dark post-punk with soaring pop aspects with each single release, I’m running low on my reserve of superlatives. But there are four new songs here, and then there’s also the question of how it hangs as an album – whether or not if feels like a padded-out singles compilation or an album proper.

I suppose the first thing to point out is that while all of their previous releases have been digital-only, The Afterdrop is receiving a vinyl pressing, meaning the songs finally feel solid and tangible in a way they perhaps didn’t before, and with the atmospheric instrumental opener, ‘Reflections’ lifting the curtain on the ten-track set, it does very much feel like an album rather than simply a collection of songs. It’s dark and spacious, with robotic drumming driving it along.

It’s then straight into the vaguely gothy post-punk of ‘Words in Vain’, with its stonking bass and fractal guitars, a tune that on its own should have earned the band global domination on a par with Editors and Interpol. ‘Neptune’ is synthier, but its poppiness is countered by dark undercurrents, and it’s a rush, as is ‘Exodous’ – a thunderous bass and brittle guitar that’s pure Interpol circa Turn on the Bright Lights defining the side.

In previous reviews, I’ve also likened Sleep Kicks to fellow Norwegians A-Ha: some of this is down to Terje Kleven’s vocal qualities – rich, varied, and with a knack for inflection, but equally, they’re a band I’ve always returned to because there’s there’s a darkness to their pop that I feel has been largely overlooked, and it’s this amalgamation of darkness with a pop sensibility that is what I’m driving at with Sleep Kicks.

‘Silencer’ – another one of the new songs – is slower, sparser, but brims with brooding and emotional resonance, and, once again, it’s magnificently crafted. This is true of every one of this album’s ten tracks. ‘Orbiting’, another song which hasn’t been released before, is bittersweet bliss and again revises the 80s spirit with a brooding yet accessible slice of guitar-driven desolation.

Again, in a just world, ‘No Chains’ would have been their ‘Pompeii’ and would have seen Sleep Kicks on the same pegging as Bastille – again, there are similarities, but the fact is that Sleep Kicks are by far the better band. It’s an unjust world where it comes down to label backing and pluggers. But then, we know it’s an unjust world, and the music industry sucks. But there’s a world outside the industry, and ‘Hall of Shame’ with its choppy guitars and snaking bass runs is as good a song as you’ll hear all year. But then, so is ‘My Own Demon’. In fact, The Afterdrop is an album without fault, and as good an album as you’ll hear all year, or ever.

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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)

Gleaming – We Dissolve EP

Posted: 21 February 2023 in Singles and EPs
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20th February 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Hailing from Austin, Texas, electronic act Gleaming are deeply rooted in 80s synth pop, and while there are hints of gothic grooves and whatnot, the more obvious touchstone is mid- to late-80s Depeche Mode. But if opener ‘Rat Me Out’ is a clear access point with a strong hook, the first single, ‘Run Faster’ is starker, harder, more industrial, a thudding kick drum welded to a relentless bassline that nags away at your brain while calling to mind DAF. It’s a tense affair, and with lines like “the phone, the ego, the friends, the future, the body I’m in – all telling me to run”, we get an insight into the EP’s themes. The band describe the EP as ‘an ode to one’s former self and depression, habits, partners, family, friends, etc.,’ adding ‘It’s an attempt to bring closure to a darker past and to celebrate life in a more positive and meaningful sense.’

Closure, catharsis, celebration: it feels like all three to an extent. ‘Ashes’ is propelled by a busy beat and throbbing bass, and ‘The Voyager’ follows its path but ventures more toward Depeche Mode c84 crossed with Pretty Hate Machine era Nine Inch Nails – it’s dark, it’s synthy, but also accessible and feels light and perhaps less menacing than intended, in the way that early Ministry wanted to be harder than it was. The glitchy autotuned vocals don’t help: the never help anything, unless perhaps you’re Cher. It’s not a bad tune – there isn’t a bad tune on the EP – but the execution, if done differently, may have had more impact.

The seven-and-a quarter-minute title track is a low-tempo, slow-burning synth-led brooder, heavy with reflection and emotion and a sense of closure.

Showcasing a certain range within the stylistic confined of their genre of choice, Gleaming are an interesting proposition, with a sound that’s familiar and illusory, but not specifically derivative – and that’s an achievement.

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Raven Said – Chants To Dissolve

Posted: 11 December 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Having showcased ‘Immersive Waves’ recently, my interest was sufficiently piqued to explore the rest of the EP from gothic/occult wave duo Raven Said. With ‘Immersive Waves’ being the last of the EP’s five tracks, it feels like I’m coming to it backwards first, although I so appreciate there is a flaw to this logic.

‘A Flowering and a Flattering’ drills in with some expansive synths wafting over a hi-NRG dance beat and thumping bass, and it falsely points toward pumping trance before going cinematic, darkwave, and then the arrival of the vocals – a heavily-processed, growling monotone baritone that’s quintessential goth – changes the tone again, and with fractal guitars chiming against a pulsing bass and stomping mechanised beat we’re in the domain of 90s second wave goth as characterised by the likes of Suspiria and the Nightbreed label’s output.

It’s the chorus-heavy guitars and theatrical vocals that dominate the broodingly dramatic ‘Transparent Sorrow’ that draws all of its cues from The Sisters of Mercy circa 85 and Ghostdance, Skeletal Family, et al, and dark grooves are the leading element of the murky ‘Except My Love for Her’. The drum machine may be backed off, but the crisp snare echoes into the sonic fog while the bass booms. The rasping vocal sounds more like a menacing threat than pleading, before the frenetic ‘Sredni Vashtar’ goes full electro and sounds like The Sisterhood’s ‘Jihad’ played at 45 instead of 33, or a KMFDM outtake. This level of electronic hyperactivity is perhaps the least successful song on the EP, and it’s not aided by the mix, with the vocals up and the drums and synths backed off. It feels somehow cheap.

But then ‘Immersive Waves’ draws together all of the best elements of the preceding tracks into a rippling mix of vintage goth and electropop steeped in theatre and atmosphere and it’s magnificently moody and leaves you wanting more, and more….

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Watch: ‘Mary in the Black and White Room’ by IST IST

Posted: 5 December 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Before we wave adieu to 2022 – IST IST – pause for reflection with the philosophical: ‘Mary In The Black And White Room’.

This new single arrives as the Manchester post/punk frontrunners also confirm a series of UK headline shows for April 2023, with dates in Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol and London. Tickets will be on sale this Wednesday (7t December) at 10AM here.

A reminder of their keenly-anticipated third album ‘Protagonists’ (slated for Spring 2023 via Kind Violence Records), the track finds the band revealing one of its most cerebral, synth-driven moments.

With shades of classic OMD, The Cure and New Order, ‘Mary In The Black And White Room’ effervesces in the darkness with its potent blend of layered synthesisers, darting basslines, and labyrinthine lyrical intrigue.

“Mary…” is inspired by a thought experiment proposed by the philosopher Frank Jackson that has since become known as ‘the knowledge argument’ (or ‘Mary’s room’). Hypothesising the work of a scientist called Mary, who exists in a black and white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of colour, but no actual human perceptual experience of colour; Jackson’s theory wonders whether Mary will gain new knowledge if she actually experiences seeing colour.

Speaking about the track, IST IST’s  Adam Houghton says:

“Mary in the Black and White Room is about trying to figure out if experience trumps knowledge. See ‘the Knowledge Argument’ where the subject, Mary, exists in a black and white world but has extensive descriptions of colour, but you don’t know if she knows what they actually look like until exposed to it. Really interesting stuff.”

Absorbed by themes explored in Jackson’s theory of physicalism, IST IST create an unconventional love-song-of-sorts. As if reaching out from another dimension, frontman Adam Houghton delivers a cascade of cryptic couplets and non sequiturs in his rich baritone, looking to add colour to a world that could be so much more than monochrome.

The single arrives with an official lyric video created by Shaolin Pete, which elegantly reflects the themes explored in ‘Mary in the Black and White Room’. Watch it here:

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The Neuro Farm – Vampyre

Posted: 28 March 2022 in Albums
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Christopher Nosnibor

Vampyre is the third album from Washington DC’s The Neuro Farm, following The Descent (2019), and Ghosts (2014). If the album titles suggest dark and haunting, it’s fitting for a band who harvest influence from the field that contains Joy Division, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sigur Ros, Chelsea Wolfe, Portishead, and Rammstein.

Comprising Brian Wolff (guitar, vocal), Rebekah Feng (violin, vocal), DreamrD (drums), and Tim Phillips (synth), the violin and synth contrive to bring rather less standard instrumental elements to the format, particularly with the absence of a live bass. That’s certainly no impedance (the only people who bleat about synth bass ironically seem to be fans of The Sisters of Mercy who haven’t move on from 1985 – because drum machine = cool, synth bass = not cool). Meh. They’re wrong.

Vampyre is a concept album, which they explain as follows: ‘Our titular heroine, lured by the promise of immortality, is given this curse by the egomaniacal leader of a vampyric cult. But within the cult there is a growing sense of disillusion, and she builds her own following. Eventually, she spurns her maker, rebelling against him and his decaying institution. She says a final farewell to her mortal husband, turning away from humanity and embracing her new nature. She slays her former master in the “midnight massacre” and declares herself queen.’

Now, as much as I’m an advocate of albums over random collections of songs, I do sometimes struggle with concept albums, in that following a narrative is often quite a strain. Too much narrative can be tedious; too little, and you’re lost, wondering what the fuck is going on. It’s a thorny territory to navigate under any circumstances.

‘Cain’ makes for a bold, theatrical introduction, the brooding drums that roll and roil providing a stoic backdrop to some theatrical, dramatic vocals. Feng isn‘t just operatic in her delivery, but she’s backed by a full choral arrangement, and then the violin sweeps in and the cinematic scale of the composition truly reveals itself in all its grand enormity.

It’s all going on with ‘Purity, a slow-builder that slithers through Rozz-era Christian Death gothness via trudging stoner rock to crescendo-blasting post-rock over the course of its six-and-a-half minutes.

‘Maker’ brings the bombast, to something on a part with Carl Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’, and transitioning through various passages of grandeur. It’s a lot to take in. The spacey prog-rock of ‘Enthralled’, the gloopy electro industrial of single release ‘Confession’, the brass-laden brooding of the metallic ‘Decay’. The piano-led, echo-heavy title track is something of a gothic masterpiece, dark, shadowy, with soaring vocals and it’s brimming with epic qualities that touch the emotional centres as it blooms in a glorious cascading sunburst finish that’s peak goth and post-rock in perfect concordance. It feels like a finale, but the three remaining songs continue to cast forth rich and resonant atmospheres, with ‘Midnight Massacre’ landing a gloom-tinged glam-stomp unexpectedly near the end. This is proper gothic rock, perfectly realised.

More often than not, anything that proclaims to be ‘goth’ or ‘gothic’ and goes down the ‘vampire’ route’ tends to be awkward, corny, and cliché, but for all of its ‘conceptual’ leanings, Vampyre is none of these; instead, it’s like a darker, more gothic dip into the domain of early iLiKETRAiNS. But above all, it’s varied, imaginative, dramatic, and really quite spectacular.

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Watch: ‘Knochen und Blut’ by St. Michael Front

Posted: 24 March 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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When negative childhood experiences leave the soul scarred, some angry feelings remain even in adult live and may result in strong words or evoke black-and-white images in the head akin to an old crime thriller. The second single from St. Michael Front’s sophomore full-length Schuld & Sühne (‘Crime and Punishment’) is loosely based on such memories that have been turned into this song’s bold title ‘Knochen & Blut’ (‘bones and blood’), which has been visually cast into a video-clip.

The Hamburgian ‘Chanson Noire’ duo formed by guitarist Bruder Matthias and singer Bruder Sascha will release Schuld & Sühne on Friday, 13th of May.

Watch the video for ‘Knochen und Blut’ here:

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St_Michael_Front_005_by_Pelle_Buys Pic by Pelle Buys

Watch: ‘Love’s Sudden Death’ by Darkher

Posted: 16 March 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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DARKHER are now premiering the bitter-sweet video single ‘Love’s Sudden Death’ taken from the beloved Northern English doom act’s sophomore album The Buried Storm, which has been chalked-up for release on April 15.

The black and white clip ‘Love’s Sudden Death’ was filmed on location at Long Dike Moor, which lies between Hebden Bridge and Haworth in West Yorkshire – and is also very close to Top Withens, the moorland that inspired the Brontë Sisters’ novels and poetry.

Watch the video here:

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Photo: Catherine Pogue

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