Posts Tagged ‘Conflict’

The Battery Farm – O God

Posted: 26 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Rare Vitamin Records – 26th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The accompanying blurb informs us that “‘O God’ is the 13th single from Manchester Doom Punks The Battery Farm’, and promises that ‘The single marks a bold expansion of the band’s signature Gutter Punk sound, adding elements of UK Garage and Metal to an already potent mix to create something dark, heavy, taut and unhinged.’

It’s quite phenomenal that they’ve racked up thirteen singles in what feels like a fairly short time. But this is a band who are absolutely driven, driven to make music and get it out there. They’ve grafted hard, and scoring increasingly high-profile support slots has done a lot in terms of reaching a wider audience, and it’s richly deserved. And I don’t mean it’s deserved simply because they’ve worked hard: they wouldn’t deserve it if they sucked! But they kick serious ass, and possess the one thing no amount of effort and luck or songwriting skill or musicianship can get you, and that’s authenticity. And with Rare Vitamin Records, they’ve found a label who are more than happy to provide a platform to their high-volume output, with this being the fifth single on the label (and it looks like the 7” has sold already, so hard luck vinyl enthusiasts, and CDs are running low already, too).

Unlike many acts from the punkier end of the spectrum, they’re by no means anti-intellectual, or given to base anti-establishment sloganeering (as my introduction to the band, ‘A Shropshire Lad’ abundantly evidenced. It’s a rare position they occupy, balancing poeticism and introversion, and deep reflection, with brute sonic force. On this front, ‘O God’ is exemplary.

As they explain, ‘O God explores the idea of being alone in a universe of chaos, with no guiding hand to stop you plummeting into a hell of someone else’s making. We always ask why, and we always search for meaning. ‘O God’ reflects starkly on the idea that there is no why and there is no meaning. Just one action leading to the next, merciless and unfeeling. Is that a thought infinitely more terrifying than the guidance of His healing hand? Or is it just life?’

The timing of this release couldn’t be better: half of America seems to be frothing at the mouth over the ‘divine intervention’ which saved Donald Trump from a sniper’s bullet just the other week, proclaiming that he has been ‘chosen by God’ to lead America and the world, while at the same time, the IDF continues to pulverise every inch of the Gaza Strip, reducing buildings to rubble under the pretext of revenge, of rescuing hostages, and eliminating terrorists. But ultimately, it’s about reclaiming land some see as having been God-given. And where is God in all this? He seems strangely silent, yet those of a certain mindset are absolutely convinced this is all God’s will. For those of us not of this mindset, it seems deranged, and that humanity is off the rails, and we live in disturbing, and truly terrifying times.

This renders the sentiment of ‘O God’ remarkably prescient.

It pairs a nagging, vaguely mathy, snaking bass groove with guitars that sounds like a bulldozer, atop which Benjamin Corry delivers a quivering, tremulous vocal in the verses, and then swings between menacing and absolutely bruising in the explosive choruses. It all adds up to a blindingly intense two-and-three-quarter minutes which conveys the complexities of internal conflict and existential anguish with a rare – and raw – power.

Flipside, the acoustic, ‘Find’ showcases a far gentler side of the band, and its intimate, tranquil feel is genuinely pleasant.

Once again – and again – The Battery Farm have excelled themselves and delivered something immensely powerful and uniquely their own.

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Miguel Angel Tolosa – Ephimeral

Posted: 23 May 2017 in Albums
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SOFA – 7th April 2017

Christopher Nosnibor

I recall that in my teens, having read the word ‘ephemeral’ just once, I used it in conversation and mispronounced it, much to the amusement of one of my fellow students. My phonetic pronunciation is replicated in the title of Miguel Angel Tolosa’s album. There’s little relevance to this anecdote in the wider picture, but that’s actually the point. It was a brief moment in time, long past and irrelevant and inconsequential on every level but for the fact that it lives on as a moment of embarrassment in my memory. And herein lies the relevance. Moments only exist in the moment: any record or document of the moment may change the context, the complexion and the enduring recollection of the moment, but in the context of the ongoing continuum of time, once the moment has passed, it’s past.

There’s surely something of a contradiction in a recorded work centred around the concept of ephemerality. The very act of committing the sound to a recorded medium captures it in time, imparts a date stamp (literal or otherwise) and locks the moment for perhaps an eternity. Ephimeral exists within these contradictions. It doesn’t exactly explore them, but the compositions – individually and collectively – serve to create a fleeting atmosphere centred around transitions and contrasts.

While the majority of the album’s compositions are preoccupied with ambience – wide, sweeping sounds, building ever-shifting cloud formations in sonic form, with the threat of a storm always looming but never becoming an actuality – there are other pieces which break the mould of fleeting, fractal aural nebulousness to coalesce into something denser, if not necessarily more tangible or readily compressed into structured musicality.

The album starts dark, ‘Rio de Cristal’ dominated by an undulating low-end drone, which segues into ‘Tropismos’, on which a dark, murky swamp of sound is rent with barrages of grinding noise and attacks of snapping shrapnel akin to machine gun fire. It’s the kind of aural experience that makes the skin crawl and the nerves jangle.

Light and dark are juxtaposed throughout, often simultaneously, with menacing chords and notes which scrape like metal against fillings filtering beneath soft, expansive clouds of sound. And perhaps it’s in the experience and the sensations this music provokes within the listener that the ephemerality of Tolosa’s work is truly apparent. The listener is left chasing fragmentary thoughts and feelings, often conflicting, arising in response to the simultaneous aspects of the music.

So how does Ephimeral leave you feeling? By turns elated but tense, strained but calm, and ultimately confused and conflicted and adrift, at odds with oneself.

 

Miguel Angel Tolosa – Ephimeral