Cruel Nature Records – 27th September 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
The scene of microlabels will always give you something absent from the mainstream. I mean it’ll give you many things, but I’m talking about variety. We live in the strangest of times. Postmodernism brought simultaneously the homogenisation of mainstream culture and the evermore extreme fragmentation of everything outside the mainstream. And example of that fragmentation is the existence of Cruel Nature Records, who operate by releasing albums digitally and on cassette in small quantities. Further, the second album by Deep Fade, is typical, released in an edition of forty copies. It’s better to know your audience and operate on a sustainable model of what you can realistically sell, of course, but do take a moment to digest the numbers and the margins and all the rest here. It’s clear that this is a label run for love rather than profit.
The sad aspect of this cultural fragmentation is that so much art worthy of a wider, if not mainstream, audience simply doesn’t get the opportunity. Not that Deep Fade have mainstream potential, by any means. As evidenced on the seven tracks – or eight, depending on format – tracks on Further, Deep Fade are just too weird and lo-fi for the mainstream to accommodate them. They simply don’t conform to a single genre, and with tracks running well over eight minutes and often running beyond the ten-minute mark, they’re not likely to receive much radio airplay either.
Opener ‘Tidal’ is exemplary. Somewhere during the course of its nine minutes it transitions from being minimal bedroom pop to glitchy computer bleepage to a devastating blast of messed-up noise. Yet through it all, Amanda Votta’s vocals remain calm and smooth as she breathily weaved her way through the sludge. The twelve-minute title track veers hard into wild Americana, a mess of country and blues and slide guitar, before tapering into fuzzed-out drone guitar reminiscent of latter-day Earth. Amidst trudging drone guitar, thick with distortion, it’s hard not to feel the lo-fi pull.
We’re immensely proud to present an exclusive premier of the video for the mighty ‘Tidal’:
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‘Surge’ arrives on a raw metallic blast before yielding to a spacious echo-soaked guitar drift and some dense, grating abstractions. Texture and detail are to the fore on this layered set of compositions are by no means easy to navigate.
As the band explain, ‘The album, influenced by Neil Young and Einstürzende Neubauten, was recorded across various locations including St. John’s, Providence, Liverpool, and Edinburgh. Environmental elements play a significant role, with guitars recorded during a nor’easter and vocals captured at lighthouses, incorporating natural sounds like wind and bird calls… Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity and the Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Sessions also influenced the album’s sound, adding to its atmospheric and melancholic feel.’
Atmospheric and melancholic it is, although many of the aforementioned touchstones aren’t easy to extrapolate from the mix. Nevertheless, and you feel your stomach enter a slow churn, which is exacerbated by the low-gear drones which sound like low-circling jets – there have been a lot of those lately and the air is filled with paranoia and mounting dread right now. Further, however not only provides a sonic landscape that matches this mood, but runs far deeper into the psyche.
The acoustic ‘Little Bird’ scratches and scrapes over a fret-buzzing acoustic guitar. The fifteen-minute ‘Heartword is simply a mammoth-length surge of everything, occasionally breaking down to piano and deep tectonic grinds.
It’s fitting that Deep Fade should call their second album Further, because this is where they take things. At times it’s terrifying and at times it’s immense.
The lyrics are as breathtaking as the crushing bass on ‘Wake Me’, and the sparse arrangement of closer ‘Fixed and Faded’, with its breathy, folky vocal and crunchy overdriven guitar which drones, echoes, and sculpts magnificent spares from feedback and sustain, brings a sense of finality and offers much to digest.
The digital version includes an additional track, another monumental epic in the form of the eleven-minute ‘Hawk’, a work of haunting, spectral acoustic country: it’s one hell of a bonus worthy of what is inarguably, one hell of an album.
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Aural Aggravation 