Posts Tagged ‘Cinematic’

Liturgy – 93696

Posted: 22 March 2023 in Albums
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Thrill Jockey – 24th March 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Wikipedia, and most other sources for that matter, will tell you that ‘Liturgy is an American black metal band from Brooklyn, New York’. The band’s own bio, which explains how their brand of ‘“transcendental black metal” exists in the space between metal, experimental, classical music and sacred ritual’ and that ‘The band is simultaneously a platform for fine art and theology’ is rather more illuminating in explaining how they have vastly expanded their horizons and those of the genre to create a form which is truly unique.

93696 is very much a concept-based work, which is best explained by quoting: ‘93696 is a number derived from the religions of Christianity and Thelema, a numerological representation of heaven, or a new eon for civilization. Hunt-Hendrix composed the album as an exploration of eschatological possibility divided by the four “laws” that govern her own interpretation of heaven, “Haelegen”: Sovereignty, Hierarchy, Emancipation, and Individuation. These laws constitute the four movements of 93696 which act as dramas all their own within the framework of the record.’

And what a record. ‘Epic’ barely touches it. It’s immense in every way, not least of all duration, with fifteen tracks spanning the best part of an hour and a half, this is expansive on a scale akin to SWANS (who they’ve previously supported). It’s also every bit as dynamically charged as latter-day SWANS albums, with tracks anything up to a quarter of an hour in length powering though a succession of crescendos, via sweeping choral soundscapes.

‘Djeennaration’ packs everything in early, presenting eight-and-a-half minutes of frenetic fretwork and thunderous percussion, over which vocals switch from angelic to demonic and back in the blast of a beat. It’s powerful, and quite bewildering in both its force and cinematic scope.

Done differently, this could feel overlong and pretentious, but the execution is so precise and the great ambition so focused on realisation that everything feels remarkably organic and despite making gigantic leaps between passages, changing tempo and tone here, there, an everywhere, it flows. Shuddering slabs of power chords that crunch like quartz while blasts off pure noise tear the air, but as ‘Haelegen II’ shows, with the incorporation of piano, there’s so much more texture and detail than plan fast-as-fuck fret attacks – then, from out of nowhere, things take a turn into folksy post-rock.

The savage squall of ‘Before I Knew the Truth’, released as a single a few weeks ago distils the potent force of the entire album into four and a half flooring minutes. There are some brief – and strange – moments of respite, such as the quavering woodwind tones of the brief interlude that is ‘Red Crown II’ and the delicate keys of ‘Angel of Emancipation’, and they’re most necessary, as the majority of 93696 is a force beyond nature.

The fifteen-minute title track is nothing short of an absolute monster, and as much as it’s n obliterative squally, it’s also a dynamic and wide-ranging sonic and cerebral experience, culminating in a vast orchestral sweep that’s nothing short of stunning.

This does feel very much like an absolute pinnacle and a definitive and exhaustive – and, it has to be said, exhausting – statement. Transcendental indeed.

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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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Watch: ‘Strip Me’ by Johnathan|Christian

Posted: 7 February 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Los Angeles-based Johnathan Mooney and Stockholm’s Christian Granquist otherwise known as the Trans-Atlantic post-punk project, Johnathan|Christian have released their latest EP, Strip Me.

The EP tells a story through a trilogy of songs, ‘Strip Me,’ ‘Sway Back’ and ‘This Too’.  The topics addressed in the trilogy include acknowledging the fear of rejection, love’s often finite nature, hitting bottom and trying to find ways out.

The EP also features remixes by Ministry’s John Bechdel, EBM legend Leæther Strip, and Steven Archer (Stone Burner/Ego Likeness), which provide unique interpretations of the duo’s sound.

The music video for ‘Strip Me’, produced by Purple Tree Creative’s Nick Van Dyk, takes a subliminal approach in terms of the cuts and imagery addressing the challenges of a relationship.

The animated video aims to explore the different emotions and experiences that come with the life cycle of a relationship in a unique and visually striking way. By using abstract imagery, the video aims to create a powerful and thought-provoking response that can help those going through challenges to understand better and process their feelings, even if it may be on a subconscious level. The video’s goal is to convey empathy and the chaos that comes with the experience of a relationship.

Watch it here:

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Watch: ‘Nyx’ by Lueenas

Posted: 11 December 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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It is no wonder that the experimental string duo Lueenas often work with film music. In their recent collaboration with animator and video artist Jonas Bentzen, their affinity for the magic that can happen moving image and moving music is highly apparent. From the p.o.v of a solo traveler, the camera takes us hauntingly through underground tunnels and fantastical sci-fy spaces of ancient aesthetics while the violent track ‘Nyx’ is carrying us through it all. For Lueenas darkness and beauty are two beautifully intertwined sensations and this duality is a driving force in their video collaboration with Jonas Bentzen, creating an eerie yet alluring and sensual journey.

For fans of Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Mica Levi’s soundtrack to Under The Skin, this music video from Lueenas and Jonas Bentzen is one to watch. “Nyx” conjures the story of Hemera’s mother, the Goddess of Night, born from Chaos and feared by all, even Zeus. Through distorted and shrieking layers of violin, and the mammoth double bass figures, she carries at once a brutal wrath and conciliatory power. Transforming into

upward blazing howls, we are reminded that there is beauty in darkness. Nyx is part of the self-titled album by Lueenas, released November 4th, 2022.  Cinematic, strings & electronics duo, LUEENAS, announce self-titled debut album, out Nov. 4. Intuition and acceptance are at the core of the debut album from Danish electrified string duo, Lueenas. Exploring the complex spaces between typical emotional dichotomies, their language emerges brimming with imaginative uses of form and texture. Born over a year of improvised sessions, and informed by their involvement in other projects across pop, jazz, electronic, experimental and post-classical music, Maria Jagd and Ida Duelund then set out to puzzle together the luring soundscapes that make up their self-titled debut. Experimenting with the limits imposed by their stringed instruments, and pushing the boundaries between acoustic, amplified and electronic sources allowed them to draw on a much broader and expressive colour palette of sounds.

Taking inspiration from ancient sacred practices, the album encompasses millennia of storytelling from distinctly female perspectives. Lueenas’ fully-cast debut album is at once the evocative score for a lauded expressionist film yet to be made, and a sermon for the fluidity of the emotional experience across time and space. As an ode to the communicative power of strings, it tells us what would otherwise remain untold. Lueenas is an experimental string duo formed in 2019 by Ida Duelund and Maria Jagd, and based in Copenhagen, DK. With violin, double bass, effects and amplifiers, they create violent and beautiful soundscapes full of panoramic grandeur. Their cinematic aesthetic has roots in both classical minimalism and improvisational rock music.

Watch the video here (click image to play):

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Dystopian Future Movies – War of the Ether

Posted: 12 November 2022 in Albums
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Septaphonic Records – 7th October 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

While Dystopian Future Movies’ ‘difficult’ second album, Inviolate, took a full three years to land after debut Time, their third, War of the Ether crashed in after just over two, and it’s an immense sonic documents that the Nottingham trio have compiled in this time.

Back in the spring of 2020, I wrote of Inviolate that ‘Everything about Inviolate is bigger, bolder, more pronounced and yet more nuanced, shaper and more keenly felt and articulated. And every corner of the album is imbued with a sense of enormity, both sonic and emotional: Inviolate feels major-scale, from the driving riffs to the heartfelt human intensity.’ That amplification is again true of War of the Ether. Dystopian Future Moves’ previous releases amply demonstrate a band with both an interest in and a knack for the cinematographic, the dramatic, so it stands to reason that they should extend these focal elements here.

This time around they’ve drawn inspiration from little-reported but truly horrifying events which took place at the former Catholic-run Tuam Mother and Baby Home in songwriter Caroline Cawley’s native Ireland, where 796 skeletons found in the grounds after suspicions were raised by a local historian in 2012. As the press release explains, ‘to hide the shame of pregnancy outside of wedlock, women were sent to homes like this all over the country – forcibly separated from their mothers, many of the children died in infancy due to neglect, and some were trafficked for adoption to the US. The country is still dealing with the fallout from these discoveries.’

War of the Ether is not a joyful record. It is, however, a record with real depth, and imbued with real emotion, as well as an aching sense of tragedy. And, as has been established as Dystopian Future Movies’ signature style, it’s an album which balances riffs and restraint, and is built on atmosphere and menace. They promise an album that ‘explores a wide range of genres from prog and shoegaze to doom-metal, noise-rock and folk,’ and don’t disappoint.

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War of the Ether opens – somewhat daringly – with the ten-minute spoken word crawler that is ‘She From Up the Drombán Hill’. For the most part, it’s sparse and spare, tingling guitars gently rippling behind the narrative – but there are bursts off noise, and it swells and grows and when it kicks in, it kicks in hard with piledriving riffage. The dynamics absolutely blow you away – exactly as intended. ‘Critical mass’ is appropriately titles, starting out with a haunting, echoed clean guitar and delicate drums rolling in the distance as a backdrop to Cawley’s aching, melodic vocal as it stretches and soars, and ‘The veneer’ is a magnificent slow-burner that builds to a shimmering sustained crescendo which unusually fades at the end. Against the weight of the subject matter and brooding instrumentation, it feels somewhat frivolous to focus on a fade, but it serves to highlight the many ways DFM are outside trends and exist in their own space. This is never more apparent than on the dreamy but serrated buzzing shoegaze of the title track.

For all its darkness, War of the Ether is a remarkably accessible album – not on account of its myriad hooks and killer choruses, but because it is simply so strong on melody and so utterly captivating. And because, as they demonstrate admirably on ‘No Matter’, the album’s shortest and most overtly structured song – they do have a real knack for snagging the listener with the combination of tunefulness and megalithic riffery. And then, the final track, the eight-and-a-half-minute ‘A Decent Class of Girl’ brings together all aspects of the album in a powerful accumulation of sedate, strolling psychedelia and climactic crescendos that optimise the impact of both.

Magical, majestic, and immensely widescreen, the scope of War of the Ether is simply breathtaking, and leaves you feeling stunned. Awesome in the literal sense.

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iVardensphere – Ragemaker

Posted: 21 January 2022 in Albums
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Metropolis Records – 4 February 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

For years, I’ve had the rage. There is, after all plenty in this world, this life, and no doubt beyond, to rage about and against. iVardensphere focus that rage through sound rather than verbally, through an album that articulates darkness and tension through the language of sound.

‘A Whimsical Requiem for the Fey’ is appropriately titled; being a breezy, neoclassical assimilation of light-as-air plucked strings and soft, accessible melody. As such, it does nothing to prepare the listener for the instant plunge into the darkest of depths brough with the growling churn of ‘The Maw’, which features Jesse Thom. But it’s on the title track that the album really hits its stride. Tribal drums dominate a gloomy soundscape, weighted with dense bass tones, but also the portent of soaring vocals. And while the jagged strings add to the tension, the drums simply build and build and batter your very being. This isn’t rage, it’s the unleashing of vengeance via the hammering of the soul.

The individual compositions are each dramatic and powerful in their own right, and the attention not only to the details of the arrangement, but the sequencing of the album stands out, and the ambition is clear without the explanation that this is ‘a sweeping, cinematic album, equally suited as the next evolutionary step of iVardensphere, and as the film score to a post-apocalyptic motion picture.’ It’s dark, stark, and atmospheric, and thunderous rhythms evoke ancient mysticism, and scenes on barren hilltops and sweeping moorlands; tribal rituals, burials, spiritual ceremonies of great import. And there are moments when those rhythms step up, pounding harder and more intensely, so as to be all-encompassing.

As the accompanying notes outline, ‘Traditional percussion from all corners of the world, Taiko, Surdo, djembe, timpani, and more are deftly intermixed with all manner of sourced percussion sounds. Hammers and anvils, slamming doors, even the sound of a dumpster being kicked are sampled and folded into the sonic melange.’ We’re in Neubauten / Test Dept territory here, but there’s a subtlety to so many of the compositions that go beyond these comparisons too: the graceful sweeps of ‘Indomitus’ stray from anything industrial towards progressive / post rock territories, and Seeming’s vocals are almost rock.

The electronic elements are remarkably restrained in the main, with only occasional incursions, such as the bending blasts of bass on ‘Varunastra’ (which features Brittany Bindrim’s vocals); elsewhere, ‘Draconian’ brings the drones, and a low, serrated throbbing. Then, it also brings glitchy danceable beats, which evolve into another crashing assault that batters away relentlessly.

Then there’s the straight-ahead thump ‘n’ grind of ‘Orcus’ and the mournful trudge of ‘The Age of Angels is Over’; these tracks conjure very different atmospheres, but in the way the album unfolds, they develop a sense of significance. If ‘Sisters of the Vipers Womb’, with Brien Hindman’s vocals, seems a little too cliché in its sinister stylings, it sits in the broader context of an expansive and immersive work that has a trajectory through ever-changing moods, and to powerful effect.

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Watch: ‘Cinematic’ by Ryan and Pony

Posted: 23 August 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Like so many acts, Ryan and Pony’s plans were stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lifted from their upcoming album, Moshi Moshi, ‘Cinematic’ is accompanied by footage that was shot at the legendary First Avenue in Minneapolis before COVID took it’s grip over live music venues everywhere.

By way of some background, the press release informs us that ‘Ryan is a workaholic multi-instrumentalist who has been playing lead guitar in Soul Asylum since 2016. Pony is a flamboyant performer and artist raised by deaf parents.  Together they have made numerous albums and toured internationally leading The Melismatics.  On Moshi Moshi they fuse Dream-Pop, post-Punk, Brit-rock, EDM, and good ol’ fashioned Rock ‘n’ Roll into a sound all their own;  irony, weirdness, and melody are at its heart.  Peter Anderson (The Ocean Blue, Run Westy Run, The Honeydogs) adds his killer drum skills to the mix.’

‘Cinematic’ lives up to its title, binding together the best of Garbage and Curve into a breezy burst of alternative pop. Watch the video here:

JG Thirlwell & Simon Steensland – Oscillospira

Posted: 1 April 2020 in Albums
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Ipecac Recordings – 24th April 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

Some cursory research tells me that Oscillospira is an anaerobic bacterial genus from Clostridial cluster IV that has resisted cultivation for over a century since the first time it was observed. There’s a distinct compositional theme across the album’s eight compositions, although, with high drama and dynamics dominating.

Thirlwell has been mining a rich seam of orchestral drama for a long while now, in a trajectory that began with the 1985 Foetus album Nail. Since then, his projects have become increasingly expansive and ambitious, and the last decade has seen him abandon all trace of anything that could be remotely construed as ‘industrial’ in favour of grand cinematics, not only on the latter Foetus albums, but also the Manorexia releases and soundtrack works and all the other various side projects… Did I mention that over 40 years into his career, despite having tempered his wilder sonic urges, Thirlwell’s creativity and output remains unabated? And yet for all the volume, the quality remains undented. I make no apologies for the fact that I’m a total fan, and have been forever.

Few musicians are even a fraction as articulate as Thirlwell, musically, lyrically, or conversationally. Throughout his lengthy career, he’s retained his somewhat enigmatic status and singular musical view.

This collaboration with Simon Steensland is one of many during his career, and is very much representative of Thirlwell’s output over the last decade: heavy orchestral work with all the widescreen feel of a John Williams work, while at the same time seeing Thirlwell return to territories that bring industrial and orchestral together in a head-on collision.

‘Catholic Deceit’ enters by stealth with a sweep of strings, but swiftly develops into something bold and layered, before crunching metal guitars grind in hard and heavy. Revisiting the religious theme at the album’s mind-point, single release ‘Papal Stain’ follows a similar trajectory, with some energetic jazz drumming and discordant horns clashing crazily over the course of its ten-minute running time.

‘Heron’ goes choral and a little bit original Star Trek, but equally has some hushed, eerie passages that not only provide contrast, but alter the mood significantly. There’s a Swans-like stop-start guitar grind at the heart of ‘Night Shift’ over which monastic vocals echo like a ritual, and ‘Heresy Flank’ pushes a cyclical groove that’s ruptured by some classic orchestral strikes.

It’s not just the arrangements and the varied instrumentation that are outstanding in their immense vision and inventiveness, but the production too: it’s immense, and while the overall effect is one thing, the detail entirely another, as incidentals leap out unexpectedly, and different instruments rise to the to fore. Often, such details are subtle, but the effect and impact are pronounced, and something special.

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Bit-Tuner – EXO

Posted: 8 January 2020 in Albums
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OUS – OUS027 – 7th February 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

The accompanying text reports that Bit-Tuner’s seventh album, EXO ‘marks a milestone in his work’ and tells of how this ‘widescreen and beatless opus focusses on musical storytelling and atmospheric depth’.

EXO is unquestionably cinematic, with synth washes that are simultaneously soft and cloud-like, but achieve a density by their layering, and they conjure a breadth of sound, too, that evokes vast vistas that stretch from horizon to horizon. This isn’t ambient in the conventional sense, and while ‘beatless’ is a largely accurate description, it’s by no means formless, without rhythm, or without a certain sense of sensory attack. There’s a deceptive amount going on across the album’s eight pieces, and EXO is an album that doesn’t simply require attention, but demands it. This is not all wimpy, wispy sonic contrails that hang in the air: EXO has a certain solidity, depth, force that renders it anything but background. You can’t settle down and chill out to this, and while the musical storytelling may not be immediately apparent, the atmospheric depth is all-encompassing.

The prefatory single ‘Passage’ very much sets the tone, and on revisiting the piece here, it’s apparent just how much the mewling top-line, that semi-resembles a lost, plaintive seagull lost in the sweeping swathes provides a contrast and focus: this is an ambient work with intense focus, and, despite the absence of beats, a strong focus on rhythm. Then, ‘Valve’ pulses and throbs and crackles with distortion and decay around the edges and while it’s expansive, it’s also probing inwards toward the depths of the listener’s psyche. This isn’t music you can just leave running in the background: it continually grabs you and draws you in, demanding attention. And at times, it’s downright difficult and edgy.

‘Disbander’ pulses and grinds, low-end hums undulate and swoop into subsonics while mid-range interference collides against thumps and crackles and upper-frequency skitters and flits. There’s a lot going on, and while it’s anything but dark, it is incredibly tense: if you equate ambient with gentle, soft, and soothing, think again. ‘Ghost Light’ hits something of a Tangerine Dream stride, and electronic blips approximating beats coalesce to create a rhythmic structure that pulsates and throbs.

So is this ambient? It certainly doesn’t conform to the notion that it’s unobtrusive, or in an way calming, or soothing, and any contemplation encouraged here is rent with challenges. How does it make you feel? Ambience is so often geared toward the cerebral, but there’s a physicality to EXO, however subtle and subliminal: there are textures that make your skin crawl, tonalities than make you twitch, tense, and tingle.

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Žibuoklė Martinaitytė – Horizons

Posted: 4 February 2018 in Albums
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Music Information Centre Lithuania – MICLCD097

Christopher Nosnibor

Horizons has been a long time in the making, and the artist has described it as a ‘Sisyphean process’, which, at the end, ‘only strengthened the joy of accomplishment’. The five compositions span from between 2006 and 2015. Martinaitytė’s biography is long and detailed, and covers the complex and challenging circumstances surrounding the composer’s journey to its completion. But an abridged rendering would focus on the fact that the pieces here are from what she terms the decade which represents the ‘blue’ period of her career, and that the album as a whole represents her explorations of ‘the dichotomies between proximity and distance, nearing and departing’.

It’s perhaps worth quoting from the accompanying notes at length, in order to demonstrate the full expanse of the album’s scope: ‘With this album and the individual works on it the author tells an absorbing emotional narrative. She begins with a larger picture – a multi-layered, timbrally rich sonic expression of the faraway landscapes (Horizons, 2013; The Blue of Distance, 2010); she then moves on towards her subjective relationship with the untouchable distance (Thousand Doors to the World, 2009; Completely Embraced by the Beauty of Emptiness, 2006); finally, she reaches the state of inner calm (Serenity Diptychs, 2015). Acoustically speaking, the concept of nearing is presented through instrumentation – she begins with larger orchestral and choral works, and finishes with a refined, chamber sound.’

The title track sets the album’s tone: ‘Horizons’ begins expansively, a vast, expansive sonic vista stretching for some seventeen and a half minutes and leading the listener through moments of grace and tranquillity punctuated by moments of drama and tension. The choral swell of ‘The Blue of Distance’ resonates deep and strikes a spiritual chord, albeit in a vague, abstract sense, touching as it does the corners of the subconscious. Bursts of vaporous ambience spar against distant echoes of notes. The drama surges and sweeps on ‘Thousand Doors’, a tempest of brass and strings mounting and enveloping the listener. While Martinaitytė is a master of the subtle and the delicate, her compositions equally demonstrate her capacity for the bold, with passages of grandeur and turbulence.

Contemporary classical seems to have been relegated to big-budget film scores, but Žibuoklė Martinaitytė is unquestionably an exponent of 21st century classical music. More to the point, Horizons is a powerful orchestral work which transcends genre boundaries and interacts on many levels.

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Žibuoklė Martinaitytė – Horizons