Posts Tagged ‘Esben and the Witch’

Nadja – Labyrinthine

Posted: 22 August 2022 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 6th September 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

These are interesting times for Nadja, the ‘ambient / experimental / doom metal’ duo comprising Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker. Luminous Rot was recorded during lockdown, and found a home on the legendary Southern Lord label. Released in the spring of 2021, it’s a veritable beast of a work, which combined metal with post-punk, cold-wave, shoegaze, and industrial.

Lockdown feels like something of not so much a distant memory as an unreality, and if by May 2021 it felt like life was returning to normal, the truth is that the wounds were still raw, and any attempt to move on as if life was back as it was before was simply a wilful act of delusion to stave off the effects of the trauma.

And with every trauma, there is some residual hangover, and you might say that Labyrinthine is the product of that. As the accompanying notes detail, the material was recorded during the pandemic and concurrently with Luminous Rot, and ‘explores themes of identity and loss, monstrosity and regret, extreme aesceticism, the differences between labyrinthes and mazes, taking inspiration from Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Victor Pelevin’s reinterpretation of the story of the minotaur and Ariadne, The Helmet of Horror.’

When a band chooses to self-release an album, it’s no longer an indication that it’s substandard or not worthy of a label release, and the case here is that Labyrinthine, which ‘this might be Nadja’s heaviest, doomiest album to date’, it’s clear that rather than consisting of session offcuts, it stands alone as a separate project from Luminous Rot, featuring as it does, a different guest vocalist on each track, and it’s worth listing them here:

Alan Dubin – legendary American vocalist from O.L.D. and Khanate and, currently, Gnaw

Rachel Davies – vocalist and bassist from the British band, Esben & The Witch

Lane Shi Otayanii – is a Chinese multi-media artist and vocalist in Elizabeth Colour Wheel

Dylan Walker – American vocalist from grindcore/noise band Full of Hell

With such a roll-call of contributors, it’s in no way possible to fee short-changed by the fact there are only four tracks, and ‘only’ is somewhat redundant when the shortest of these is almost thirteen minutes in duration. This is an album alright, and it’s an absolute fucking monster at that.

And while the CD release is on the band’s own label, Broken Spine, there are limited cassette versions by several different indie labels from around the world: Katuktu Collective (US), Cruel Nature Recordings (UK), Bad Moon Rising (Taiwan), Adagio830 (Germany), Muzan Editions (Japan), WV Sorcerer (France/China), Pale Ghoul (Australia), and UR Audio Visual (Canada) – and it’s perhaps noting that the running order differs between formats,  and I’m going by the Cruel Nature tape sequence here rather than the CD. It may be more intuitive from a listening perspective, but limitations off format and all…

This co-operative approach to releasing music is highly commendable, and seems to offer solutions to numerous problems, not least of all surrounding distribution in the post-pandemic, post-Brexit era where everything seems on the face of it to be fucked for any band not on a major label with global distribution and access to pressing plants and warehouses worldwide.

The title track is a lugubrious droning crawl: imagine Sunn O))) with drums crashing a beat every twenty seconds in time with each pulverising power chord that vibrates your very lungs. And those beats are muffled, murky, and everything hits with a rib-crushing density, that’s only intensified by the squawking, anguished vocals that shred a blasted treble in contrast to the thick billows of booming bass sludge, and it’s a truly purgatorial experience.

And then, here it comes, and it all comes crashing down hard over the course of the most punishing nineteen minutes in the shape of the brutal behemoth that is ‘Necroausterity’. In a sense, the title speaks for itself in context of a world in lockdown, and it’s sometimes easy to forget just what terrifying times we endured, watching news reports of bodies piling up in New York and elsewhere while governments and news agencies fed a constant stream of statistics around cases and deaths. It felt truly apocalyptic. And ‘Necroausterity’ is the sound of the apocalypse, tuned up to eleven and slowed to a crawl, the writhing torture of a slow, suffocating death soundtracked by guitar and drums do dense and dark as so feel like a bag over the head and a tightening grip on the throat. The recording is overloaded, distorting, and it’s a simply excruciating experience. And it simply goes on, chord after chord, bar after bar, slugging away… and on in a fashion that makes SWANS feel lightweight in comparison. It’s relentless, unforgiving, brutal, and punishing.

‘Rue’ broods hard with dark, thick strings and a heavy atmosphere, but it’s light in comparison. It’s dense, and weighty, but Rachel Davies’ ethereal vocal drifts gloriously within the claustrophobic confines and conjures another level of melody that transforms the thick, sluggish drones into something altogether more enchanting. It builds to a throbbing crescendo that is – perhaps not entirely surprisingly – reminiscent of Esben And the Witch or Big | Brave.

Wolves howl into the groaning drone of ‘Blurred’ and the guitars slowly simmer and burn: no notes, just an endless am-bleeding distortion before the power chords crash in and drive hard, so low and slow and heavy so as to shift tectonic plates and shatter mountains. Amidst the raging tempest, Lane Shi Otayanii brings an otherworldly aspect that transcends mere words, making for a listening experience with a different kind of intensity as it trudges and churns fir what feels like a magical eternity.

The sum total is the sound of hellish desperation, and while Labyrinthine may offer absolutely no solace in the bleakest pits of deathly despair, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an album that better articulates perpetual pain and anguish better than this.

AA

cover

Watch: ‘Lowly Weep’ by Darkher

Posted: 18 January 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Darkness treads light as a feather. The voice of despair gently wafts through the air. Delicate pain wrapped in radiant beauty pierces the heart slowly yet without hesitation. The sinister yet beguiling images that DARKHER aka Jayn Maiven paints with her ethereal vocals, guitars, and added strings conjure iridescent cinematic scenes in which it becomes hard to tell whether there lies beauty in darkness or if it is the other way around.

With her sophomore full-length "The Buried Storm", the guitarist, composer, lyricist, and producer has clearly succeeded to even improve the beloved alchemic musical formula that was firmly established on DARKHER’s debut album "Realms" in 2016. Her mostly eerie and at times even outright sinister sonic storytelling comes refined on every level and with sharpened contrasts that reflect the ongoing learning-process of their creator. 

DARKHER were conceived as the sole brainchild and solo-project of Northern English singer and guitarist Jayn Maiven in 2012. The dark and melancholic yet also massively heavy sound on the self-titled debut EP "Darkher" (2013) combined with the distinct vocals of the shy pre-Raphaelite beauty caused an audible buzz – particularly in the doom scene and brought DARKHER a quick record deal, which led to the following EP "The Kingdom Field" (2014) appearing via Prophecy Productions.

Despite not even having an album out, DARKHER were invited to prestigious festivals such as Roadburn in Tilburg, The Netherlands and Prophecy Fest in the Cave of Balve, where the English delivered widely celebrated performances. In 2016, the highly anticipated debut full-length "Realms" was finally released to much praise from critics and fans alike. Press compared DARKHER’s music with a wide range of highly individual acts such as CHELSEA WOLFE, ESBEN AND THE WITCH, SÓLSTAFIR, LOREENA MCKENNITT, and PORTISHEAD.

In the meantime, Jayn’s long-time drummer Christopher Smith, who already contributed to earlier releases, live shows, and again on "The Buried Storm" has been added as permanent member to the line-up of DARKHER.

"The Buried Storm" gives shape to the darkness lurking at the edge of consciousness, hidden from plain sight but patiently biding its time to strike out at the heart. DARKHER have delivered another frightening masterpiece that easily transcends musical boundaries with its broad appeal to friends of dark sounds regardless of genre. "The Buried Storm" captivates its listeners with deceptive sweetness – only to bind them tightly within a thorn-spiked nocturnal beauty forevermore.

Watch ‘Lowly Weep’ here:

AA

Darkher_001_by_ Kathryn_Pogue

Image: Kathryn Pogue

GHXST – Perish (EP)

Posted: 10 March 2017 in Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

3rd February 2017

Christopher Nosnibor

As a band who really grabbed me by the throat with the release of their ‘Nowhere’ EP in 2015, the arrival of the latest offering from GHXST in my inbox was cause for excitement. And rightly so. To cut to the chase, Perish is a masterpiece.

The EP’s first track, ‘Southern Eye’, carries the refrain of ‘nowhere’ and as such, continues the theme of displacement, of outsiderdom, of not belonging which was core to the aforementioned EP. It’s a fair summary of what GHXST are about, musically, conceptually, and lyrically. Their songs deal with darker themes, and the cover art, which seems to evoke the spirit of Joy Division conveys an appropriate sense of bleakness, but also a certain, ineffable serenity and grace.

On the title track, a rushing guitar grind and reverberating samples are counterpointed by a haunting – and achingly beautiful – vocal that has hints of Alison Shaw of Cranes, only less squeaky, and Toni Halliday. The contrast is what defines the sound, and is ultimately what makes GHXST so special: it’s so rare for a band this heavy to convey so much emotional sensitivity. Theirs is not a sonic expression of nihilistic rage, but of something altogether more nuanced, possessing a heart-trembling beauty, rendered all the more distinct in their execution by the use of a drum machine. As such, they’re in an entirely different league from the few doomgaze contemporaries with female vocals one might name, like Esben and the Witch and Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. And on this outing they expand their sound to incorporate elements of blues and country. How does that sit as a genre? But it’s not merely the fact they exist within their own niche: the tracks on Perish: the quality of the songs, and their spectacularly atmospheric execution is something special.

‘Stories We Tell’ achieves a heart-rending beauty while crushing your skull with punishing guitars and pounding, slow-tempo percussion: the guitars grate and grind, each power chord throbbing with a malevolent afterburn. ‘Summer Moon’ presents a surging pop dynamic, a dash of Jesus and May Chain against a Chapterhouse-y whirl of shoegaziness and ‘Waiting for the Night’ is a slow-surging dirge, riven with the crackling pops of Akai snare bursts which shouldn’t work but actually bring a bleak aggression to the droning. Closer ‘No Wild West’ introduces a droning desert blues element, the chugging guitars drifting over an expansive, barren wasteland as Shelley X drawls into a sea of reverb.

This is by no means inaccessible music: it’s music to lose yourself in. The songs themselves are comparatively short – none extend beyond the five-minute mark – but all bear all the hallmarks of true epics, with a sound which is beyond vast.

 

 

 

 

GHXST - Perish

Esben and the Witch – Older Terrors

Posted: 7 January 2017 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Season of Mist – 4th November 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

The music industry may have changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet – a shift which became perhaps more noticeable marked around the turn of the millennium and has become exponential, transforming the way the whole system operates beyond all recognition in the last decade or thereabouts – but one thing remain largely unchanged, and that’s the way promotion works. I’m not referring to thy myriad alternative channels available through new media, ranging from the viral video to the release slipped out with no promo whereby word of (virtual) mouth alone can catapult a release into the stratosphere. I’m not talking about live streams or download-only bonus packages, either. I am, of course, perhaps predictable, talking about reviews. While some bands dismiss this aspect of promotion and sneer at critics, reviews can – and do – give exposure to acts who likely wouldn’t have otherwise been brought to the public’s attention, or as widely. But the focus is on the buzz around the release. There’s often a clamour to be the first to review a forthcoming release, and in the weeks either side of a release, it’s all about getting the reviews in.

But sometimes, this can backfire. Some albums really do take a fair while to bed in. they require – and deserve – time to be digested, for quality cogitation before finally imparting a balanced critical assessment. What do you want, a knee-jerk snapshot summary, or a more considered appraisal? I know what I want as a music fan. As such, I make no apology for the fact I’ve been slow with this. Having been particularly impressed by A New Nature, it was clear that Older Terrors would not be an immediate album, and with just four tracks filling its half-hour run-time, it’s not a collection of instant-gratification radio-friendly pop tunes that’s on offer.

This album landed with me around the same time as Neurosis’ Fires Within Fires. The Neurosis album failed to move me and proved, ultimately to be an immense disappointment, while Older Terrors struck me as utterly gripping. How could to albums which, in the face of things, share so much common ground and effectively be born from a very similar template, elicit such diametrically different reactions? I’ve spent a long time wrestling with this question, and will return to it shortly.

It perhaps goes without saying that this is epic. It’s an Esben and the Witch album, after all. But there’s something about the four tracks which comprise Older Terrors which really do redefine the band’s direction, and expands upon the long-form approach hinted at on their 2014 split release with Thought Forms.

‘Sylvan’ starts with a delicately picked guitar and backed-off drum, which flutters in the mist of the ancient forest. There’s no denying the captivating, mesmeric power of Rachel Davies’ voice. She conjures truly beautiful notes, but at the same time, there’s a weight, a deep-seated sense of longing, mourning, an ache which resonates with every breath. Hers is not a rock or metal voice, but a folk voice, which coveys far more than the words themselves – although the lyrics, too evoke deep, dark, medieval woodlands and mystical wildernesses. For the most part, the song shows great restraint, holding back the tidal wave of noise in favour of forging atmosphere and majestic sonic vistas. But when the levee breaks, it’s a magnificent burst of shoegaze /post-rock / metal which stands shoulder to shoulder with Jesu at their best. ‘Come with me… to the place where the wolves are weak,’ Davies implores. Something in the way she sings it makes you want to go with her.

It’s not about the difference between Rachel Davies’ vocal delivery and that of Scott Kelly which places so much distance between Esben and the Witch and Neurosis, though, although the depth of emotion conveyed is certainly a factor. The other key elements are the song structures and the fundamental nature of how the songs are played. The song structures on Older Terrors is unpredictable, in contrast to the formulaic approach which defines Fires Within Fires. Esben and the Witch hold back those raging guitar tempests; there are feints, sleights and even outright denials, which make the thunderous crescendos even more gratifying.

‘Marking the Heart of a Serpent’ explodes into raging blasts of noise, in between enticing, alluring verses, and culminates in a truly immense crescendo which transcends the earthly mores of rock music. ‘The Wolf’s Sun’ lumbers through Arthurian woodlands, with ruptures of fire and brimstone conjuring scenes of bruised fearfulness. Closer ‘The Reverist’ is hushed, thoughtful, ponderous and haunting, but still yields a climax of crushing weight. I truth, that’s a vast understatement. I mean, it’s beyond immense.

There’s something ultimately natural about Older Terrors too. While the grainy timbres of the guitars are a key element to the sound, the ragged edges which show in the raw, powerhouse drumming and mammoth riffs when they eventually tear through feel like they’re necessary rather than strategic, as if they can hold back no more and simply have to break out. And when they do break out, the mammoth guitar and thunderous drums are counterbalanced by truly beautiful vocals.

So while the dynamic focus calls to mind Neurosis, the deep, dark, mystical folk leanings of Older Terrors shares more with latter-day Earth and the hypnotic currents of Pain Teens at their most spaced out.

Older Terrors is a remarkable and extremely powerful album, which operates on a subconscious, spiritual level, rather than an explicitly musical, immediate level. It’s anything but immediate, and in truth, it’s an album which requires a lot of patience. But it’s immensely rewarding, and resonates on levels far beyond words.

 

esben-and-the-witch-older-terrors-1