Waxing Crescent Records – 7th July 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
Since parting ways with Gavin Millar and worriedaboutsatan, Thomas Ragsdale has been incredibly busy recording both as Ffion and Sulk Rooms, as well as playing synths with Mancunian post-rock act Pijn. Looking at his bandcamp, you wonder how he has time to piss, let alone sleep.
The Incidental Crack, meanwhile, are no strangers to these pages either, and Simon Proffitt, Rob Spencer and Justin Watson are hardly idlers when it comes to creativity, with The Incidental Crack Does Nothing, released almost a year ago to the day from this release, following two albums in 2021.
And as the accompanying notes explain, it’s this shared love of the act of creating that brought the two together: ‘Split was created through the desire to collaborate. Thomas Ragsdale and The Incidental Crack spoke about the idea of working on a split release and then all hurried away into their studios to get to work. The split idea soon become a reality as music was exchanged ready to share.’
The title is factual, and gives nothing away, but it’s also descriptive in a way, in that it’s distinctly an album of two halves, complimentary and contrasting.
Sulk Rooms present a single longform composition of some twenty-one-and-a-half minutes in duration: The Incidental Crack’s contribution is of more or less equal length, but spread across three pieces.
Sulk Rooms’ ‘Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’ has no connection to Meat Loaf and his bombastic rock, and is instead a big, slow-moving mass of ambience, which has a density and shade as well as a certain lightness. ‘Vaporous’ and ‘cloud-like’ are terms I often reach for in the face of such works, but this feels more like standing atop a mountain while the cloud thickens to the point that there is no visibility, to the point that you’re unable to even discern the presence of your own body, and so dense as to be suffocating – perhaps more like a smog or smoke. Tim Hecker managed to create such a sensation the time I saw – or, more accurately, was present, when he played in Leeds a few years back. The smoke was so dense and the lighting so minimal as to induce a kind of sensory deprivation. But with the swirling sounds all around, there was, simultaneously, sensory overload. You need balance: many of us are reliant on multiple senses, and those who lack sight, hearing, often experiencing a sharpening of the senses which do function. But his is not an immediate thing, and to suddenly find oneself with restrictions, it’s a shock of sorts. And so while ‘Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’ is soft and tranquil, the experience isn’t entirely soothing as I feel an inner tension grow as the time drifts and dissolves, diffusing in reverberating waves of vocal samples.
The Incidental Crack’s three cuts are descriptively titled and combine elements of the dramatic and the mundane to intercut aspects of pathos with bathos to somewhat comic effect.
‘Rob To Holland Via Köln And Back Again’ sounds like is should have something of a travelogue feel, but is, in fact, a work of dark ambience with deep tensions evoking the chilling fear of The Cold War, while ‘Lawnmower Death And Subsequent Resurrection’ isn’t an homage to the parodic thrash band Lawnmower Deth, but a soundtrack to the trauma of dealing with tools and appliances when they don’t function as intended. Yes, most of us have been there, but to feel it so bluntly and boldly is impactful. This – if I’m not mistaken – the sound of a guy recording his DIY and the like before seeking a narrator. Yet, there are some dark atmospherics too, and thee overall sensation is ominous rather than uplifting. And by that measure, the ‘Bus Stops In Wigan’ must be pretty fucking terrifying: places to avoid in bleak territories.
As split albums go, it’s absolute perfection in that it gives you everything you want. If the two acts operate very differently in formal terms, both have created deep, dark works here that make for a release that’s wide-ranging, interesting, and just a little scary.
AA
Aural Aggravation 