June has been a quiet month for me musically, festival season is well underway so I guess that’s just how things are over the summer. Luckily there’s been some great new music towards the end of the month, I was getting worried.
I’m going to start with something different this time. Please feel free to skip it if you’re not into me trying to get some thoughts about music production into a coherent shape. I apologize for being so shit at WordPress I can’t make a skip button.
Novere
Icarus
This is Novere’s second release and it’s a great bit of post metal. You can hear the band developing their sound and identity and there are some fantastic sludgy riffs. You should listen to it, it’s very good.
But what caught my attention was this diary by Matteo, the band’s guitarist. It’s a nice piece about his excitement about playing music and the challenge of recording with limited time and money. Have a read. It’s a short piece.
Right, still here? Good.
Now, I’ve nothing particularly groundbreaking to say here, but when I first heard that Novere were just releasing one song, my first thought was, why bother? Why not an ep. It would be more interesting.
Reading the above post just brought home just how much hard work goes into any band you listen to. The time and expense that is just disregarded and hand waved away with the idea that bedroom production is cheap and convenient these days.
It’s so easy to ignore the work that goes into creating music, the expense to record it and the amount of your life you need to give over to make it good. All for it to turn up on a streaming platform and just disappear.
I don’t have a solution, this diary just stuck with me and made me realise just how lucky we are that people are still willing to make music in a world where it’s most likely never going to pay the bills.
Anyway, to the reviews.
Final Light
Final Light
Final Light is a collaboration between Perturbator and Johannes Persson, front man from Cult of Luna. It was commissioned for the Roadburn festival and is a great idea but while the post metal of Cult of Luna and the Synthwave of Perturbator look like it should work together, there are a few things I was worried about going into this. The first was that Synthwave can be very cheesy, the other is Johannes. He has an incredible roar but it can overpower almost anything it’s used over, I mean, he can overpower Cult of Luna albums, so will a bunch of synths be able to hold their own over his bellow?
Turns out there was nothing to be worried about, this album is gold.
Like all collaborations, it’s down to the blend of both artists on how the final product sounds. Here it sounds like Perturbator writing a post metal album, the drum machines clatter and the synths roar like down tuned guitars. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, with Persson’s guitar cutting like a buzzsaw through the songs adding texture and fighting through the vocal onslaught.
That’s not to say that there aren’t easy going moments, some of this album is quite pretty, the light and dark contrast well, but this isn’t an album you come to for a fun time. This is intense stuff. If there was a scene on Blade Runner where Deckard was in a metal club, Final Light are the band that would be on stage. That’s the neon washed, dark future this album perfectly conjures.
Here’s hoping for more music between these two,
Production Unit Xero
Combat Decker’s Handbook
I’ve been trying to crack IDM for about 20 years now and for some reason PUX’s album Chunibyo Love Poems was the album to finally get me there earlier this year. So I was more than delighted to find out that he has a new EP out.
Three of the four tracks here are relatively easy on the ear. They have the complex IDM percussion but there is a strong sense of song here rather than some of the genre’s more abstract artists. Dynrah’s Theme is a perfect moody introduction and I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be the theme to someone’s role playing character. The ep highlight is Thylsadyn Dub, a claustrophobic, woozy headfuck of a track that while not very aggressive will leave you shaken.
This is a great ep and I think I’d like to play the Shadowrun campaign that I suspect this the soundtrack for.
Stevie Cox and Fossil Archive
Daydreamer
Stevie Cox and Fossil Archive have made one of my favorite kinds of techno.
It’s dark and synthy, perfect for driving under old fashioned sodium street lights. It’s full of atmosphere and feels as suited to sound tracking a club scene as for dancing in one. Stolen Glances and Searching have an irresistible bass pulse and acid line that will make you want to sway with your eyes closed and your hands over your head.
This is simply slick and all round great dance music.
Enrico Sangiuliano
Silence
It’s been five years since Enrico’s album, Biomorph, so hopefully this ep is a sign that he has more new music for us.
Enrico’s huge, banging melodic sound always puts a smile on my face. It can be very close to trance in places but you know, that’s fine too. What’s important is that this ep will make you move. Future Dust and New Expressions of Love are tracks on here that will get you on your feet. New expression has a woosy melody propelling the track on, perfectly designed for the more mashed souls on the dance floor, whereas Future Dust is the more straight ahead banger.
I can try to be clever and give a witty summation but all I’ll say is “Shut up and dance!” And that’s all you need.
Graywave
Rebirth
So if I was to tell you that this ep is a perfect melding of goth and shoegaze with a touch metal, would you be interested or have you started running? Still here? Good, you’re in for a treat.
I always find Goth a hard thing to define, but here? It’s the bass. That bass sound is pure dry ice and high drama to me.
Rebirth is a perfect mix of goth bass and shoegaze guitars that get intense enough to almost cross over into metal . Closer has more than a passing resemblance to Slowdive’s guitar sound, but it will be a cold day in hell before I hold that against someone.
While the music is different, the atmosphere Graywave has fits in with artists like A.A Williams and Emma Ruth Rundle, that dark, metallic, shoegaze sound. Graywave may not be quite good enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with either of those artists but this is only her second ep and I can only see her getting even better with her next steps.
Efterklang
Plexiglass
There was a time where I never missed an Efterklang show but I fell out of love with their music at some point. I’m not sure what inspired me to give their new ep a try but I’m so glad I did, Plexiglass reminds me why I loved them so much in the first place.
Everything I love and have missed from Efterklang is here, delicate beats, beautiful vocal harmonies, songs so fragile that they sound like they could dissolve in a strong breeze, but somehow stick in your head. They have such a unique sound that they are unmistakable, Limited Memory is like sunlight in song form.
Rain take me back Himalaya is a more structured (for Efterklang) indie song and shows there’s still a lot of that they can do with their sound, even if it is a bit more restrained than their older material.
It’s great to be back in their company
Till next time my friends.
The ways of exile 