26th November 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
Deborah Fialkiewicz has been keeping busy – as usual. Composer of contemporary classical, ambient, and dark noise works both as a solo artist and in various collaborative permutations and guises, she’s back with a new BLOOM release in collaboration with Daniel James Dolby. And it’s a Christmas single.
I’ve never been rabid about Christmas, and the last three years have seen a succession of difficult Christmases for me personally. In December 2021, my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. We weren’t even sure if she would be home for Christmas. She was, but was incredibly weak after three weeks in hospital, and that she was able to sit at the table for Christmas dinner felt like a miracle. We were in shock, and she was clearly unwell. Having made substantial improvements in rebuilding her strength through 2022, she deteriorated with the onset of winter, and again was weak and struggling over Christmas. It still doesn’t seem real that she only had another three weeks. And so Christmas 2023 was the first with just me and my daughter, aged twelve. We made the best of it, but it wasn’t the same. I detail this not for sympathy, but purely for context. It means that while around this time of year it becomes nigh on impossible to avoid festive fervour, with adverts depicting happy couples and radiant nuclear families, all the usual Christmas tunes and an inbox busting with new ones clamouring for coverage, and Facebook friends and work colleagues are dizzy with excitement over getting their decorations up, sorting secret Santa and planning social activities, I’m not feeling much enthusiasm, concerned primarily with getting through it and hoping distant relatives don’t think I’m rude or twatty for not sending cards out for the second year in succession.
When writing about music, I am often – and perhaps increasingly – aware that how we engage with it, how it affects us, is intensely personal and involves multitudinous factors. Sometimes, it’s something as arbitrary as the mood we’re in when we hear a song that will determine our response. And the chances are – and I’m no doubt not alone in this – hearing chirpy tunes when I’m down isn’t going to cheer me up, it’s going to really piss me off, or set me off. It’s impossible to predict. To be safe, I tend to try to avoid Christmas songs, which involves avoiding TV and radio – which is surprisingly easy if you spend large chunks of your time in a small room reviewing obscure music – avoiding shops – manageable – tacky pubs – easy – and ignore review requests for Christmas singles.
But there is always space for an exception, and Bloom’s ‘The Season’ is it. Deborah may have been posting pics on Facebook of the ‘festive mouse’ in the studio to mark this release, but said mouse is looking over a piece of kit called ‘Psychosis Lab’ made by Resonance Circuits. The cuddly cartoon cover art for this release is misleading, and for that, I am grateful.
It’s five minutes of deep, hefty beats melded to a throbbing industrial synth bass. Atop this thumping dance-orientated rhythm section, there are synths which bring a dark 80s synthpop vibe. In combination, the feel is in the vein of a dance remix of Depeche Mode circa ‘85 or ’86, around the point they began making the transition from bouncy pop toward altogether darker territories. It’s repetitive, hypnotic, pulsating, big on energy. But there are eerie whispers which drift through it all, distant wails like spirits rising from their graves. These haunting echoes are more evocative of Halloween than Christmas – and this is a significant part of the appeal. It’s a curious combination of ethereal mists and hefty, driving dance groove, which is simultaneously uplifting, tense, and enigmatic. It is not schmaltzy, cheesy, twee, or saccharine. It’s the season, alright. The season to be weird, to be unconventional, to accept those darker moods and remember that they will pass. It’s a Christmas anthem for those who aren’t feeling festive. And I will most certainly drink to that.
AA
Aural Aggravation 