Aural Aggravation

343 Collective / Broken Soundtracks / Jam Recordings –15th October 2023

The arrived of this album piqued my curiosity for a number of reasons, and one of the first things I felt compelled to do was unravel, or at least understand, the context of the title, since it seems to connote being the music which accompanies a movies. On my journey, I discovered that in film, a score is, at least according to Masterclass.com, ‘the specific musical piece or incidental music that accompanies a scene or moment in the film, and a soundtrack is the compilation of songs and sounds that comprise all of the film’s music. Scores are usually created by one or more composers, while soundtracks typically feature songs by different bands, artists, or musicians.’

But equally, a score is notation, usually in manuscript or printed form, of a musical work, believed to derived from the vertical scoring lines that connect successive related staves.

This album is neither notation nor featured as part of any movie – at least, not one that’s been produced yet.

The ensemble founded by Jon Dawson, and John Bundrick as a side project to Third of Never has expanded considerably, now standing as a six-piece, with this outing features additional contributions from Rabbit (The Who), Steve Kilbey (The Church) and Doug McMillan (The Connells), and was recorded alongside the forthcoming Third of Never album.

They describe the album as ‘a lysergic mood journey of epic proportions’, and advise that it be listened to ‘all at once, in the dark, accompanied by someone you trust, and a lava lamp.’ Well, it being a wet night at the end of September, it’s been dark since before 8pm. I’m alone in my office, and in the absence of a lava lamp, I have a couple of candles lit, and as such, my listening experience and ultimately my review are in the spirit of the album and its intentions – penned in a single sitting, straight through, no pauses, no rewinds, no munching popcorn. Just the quiet sipping of an Islay single malt.

To describe it as ‘epic’ isn’t hyperbole, but a statement of fact: the scope and impact of Original Score is vast. There’s no delicate, slow-building introduction: ‘Attention’ says a voice urgently but dryly, before a sound-collage begins to layer up before our very ears, and that rapidly evolves into a space-age jazz workout with rolling piano and hectic drums driving through fluttering cut-ins and cut-outs, and everything’s happening at once, for a time pinned together by a crunking, choppy bass before ethereal voices float in a chorus of reverb to carry it all away. Done differently, it could be a chaotic disaster, but it’s more Burroughs than Beefheart, and in filmic terms feels like the accompaniment to a three-way-split screen with rapid intersections and scene changes across all three.

Perhaps it’s the power of suggestion, or the potency of the whisky, but Original Score does feels like a very visual audio.

Because of the fact the eleven pieces are segued to form one continuous work, if you’re not actually looking at the CD display, there’s no way of really knowing when one ends and the next begins: because the individual tracks aren’t linear or overtly structured, the transitions between them are seamless.

There are some uplifting, light-hearted passages, and some incredibly dark, almost spooky ones, as haunting voices float hither and thither over wailing guitar feedback, undulating organ notes, and ponderous bass, fractured, treated vocals adding to the unsettling disorientation.

There’s a strongly proggy space-rock vibe, and the quavering keys and strolling bass segments lean heavily towards that seventies sound. I’m not well enough versed to differentiate Yes from King Crimson, but these are the touchstones that spring to mind, melted into Hawkwind wigouts. At times, the images it conjures are of spinning through space, hurtling headlong into the void; others, simply of a band on a massive stage with a drummer and three percussionists, multiple keyboardists with tassled sleeves delivering fifteen-minute solos to a Woodstock-sized crowd, with bearded guys in flares utterly losing their shit. It may be all of this and more, or none of these things when it comes to your own experience.

And this is, undoubtedly, the beauty – and artistic success – of Original Score. It’s the real-time unravelling soundtrack to the movie that you picture in your mind’s eye.

AA