Johann Heinrich Füssli

1802

Northaunt. The Ominous Silence . 2001. 4.5 stars .

Yet another brilliant and obscure record from Norway, Northaunt’s The Ominous Silence features chilling dark-ambient passages complete with sparse piano work and haunting field recordings from nature. Northaunt takes cues from black metal, chamber rock and the avant-garde to create a compelling listening experience that weaves between starkly beautiful melodies and menacing samples, pulling you into the black recesses of the unknown.

The Ominous Silence is exceptional for its painstaking attention to detail, as each drone, gargling vocal and effect is used subtly to create a mysterious soundscape. While the majority of the tracks here run long, they are still driven by underlying melodies so their efforts don’t become too outstretched and abstracted. Such a curious and unsettling work like The Ominous Silence demonstrates the evocative power of dark ambient and calls your attention to the quiet happenings around you. Every drop of rain, gust of wind and thundering storm is part of a wild, puzzling concert and Northaunt act as a medium for it. Powerful, if not often disturbing, material from one of the most underwritten genres.

A Funeral Inside

Darkspace . Darkspace III . 2008. 4 stars .

This album is total insanity. With open wintry keyboards and furious black metal riffs, Darkspace create a crushing atmosphere that swallows everything around it. If you are familiar with Switzerland’s Paysage d’Hiver, you will know what to expect here, as Darkspace features PDH’s Tobias Möckl on guitars and vocals. While PDH was barren, lo-fi and rustic, Darkspace’s sound sports slightly better production and its ragged guitar rhythms are given more room to breathe. The sound created here is cold, grim and bleak but is also feverishly paced, running through torrents of visceral blackness.

Darkspace are less focused on crafting songs as they are on developing a harsh sonic landscape, as all of these tracks run long, eventually becoming monolithic walls of sound. While it is often challenging to have no distinctive compositional elements stick out in the mix, as everything blends together in a sea of darkness, there are still some powerful melodies under the surface to move the episodes along. Every so often a brutal doom metal riff will come chugging along, providing a relentless current to pull you along.

Taken as an immersing experience, Darkspace III is an exceptional black metal record that successfully incorporates ambient elements and chilling keyboard sections to full effect. In terms of disticntive song craft and variety however, causal metal fans may find this to be rather inaccessible. Its their loss still, since albums with such relentless consistency and cohesion are hard to come by.

Grouper . Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill . 2008. 4 stars .

As soon as you get past the disturbing cover art and awkward title, you’ll find that Grouper’s latest album is a stunning gem, with some of the most soothing vocal harmonies you’ll hear this year. Centered on the soft, calming performance of Elizabeth Harris, Grouper’s melodies seem to defy gravity, floating over dark reverb and ambient loops. The vocal tracks are kept distant in the mix, sounding like an ethereal spirit, while gliding drones and gentle acoustic guitars move dreamily along.

While the lyrics remain cryptic under the hazy instrumentation, there is a strong feeling a peace throughout these songs, moving you into a deep and relaxed psychedelic state. The psych-folk aesthetic here is presented with serene clarity that shines through the album’s entirety, making this a unified experience rather than a collection of distinctive songs. Certainly there is a sense of sameness that runs through Dragging a Dead Deer , but its general lack of variety mostly reinforces the pleasant, hypnotic tones being developed here, immersing you in their warm glow. For its delicacy and meditative power, Grouper’s work here stands among 2008’s greatest surprises and will be sure to please fans of post-rock acts like Gregor Samsa and My Bloody Valentine. Recommended.

Mike Doherty has written the inspired article Modest Muse for the CBC, examining the impact of author JG Ballard’s writing on popular music, particularly in post-punk and industrial scenes. Ballard’s writings developed a cult following worldwide, as he wrote speculative fiction pitting transgressive protagonists against cold mechanical worlds and dangerous urban pathologies not unlike our own.
A brief excerpt:

The British author, now 76, is often said to have inspired the entire genre of industrial music, and his fiction certainly explores its central preoccupations. Ballard writes about the increasingly intimate relationship between humans and machines (most infamously with Crash, in which characters become aroused by car crashes) as well as the disturbing atmosphere of mind control created by the prevalence of mass media (as found in the experimental 1970 story collection The Atrocity Exhibition).

Having been both a Ballard and Joy Division fan, I found the article to be strangely revealing as it brought me deeper into post-punk’s often literary aspirations. I’ve noticed similar expressions of post-industrial anxiety in the work of Nine Inch Nails, especially the technological horror shows of The Downward Spiral, where songs like Ruiner and The Becoming eschew an almost bio-mechanical aesthetic.

When put into a wider thematic and cultural context, music like this becomes part of a larger, almost philosophical movement concerning the sociological decline of civilization. Bodies without limits, thresholds shattered, time accelerated. Symptoms of a wider post-modern dystopia where no definition, of love, of progress, of humanity, is safe from deconstruction.

Suffocate for Fuck Sake . Blazing Fires and Helicopters on the Front Page of the Newspaper. There’s a War Going On and I’m Marching in Heavy Boots . 2008. 4.5 stars.

Blazing Fires is a daring, if not downright suicidal, album from Sweden’s post-hardcore newcomers Suffocate for Fuck Sake. Gorgeous instrumentals, complete with sorrowful piano keys, shimmery post-rock guitars and strings frame a dark narrative of depression and redemption, as told by an institutionalized young woman. Just as Matthew Good’s Hospital Music expressed the toils of mental illness with dramatic shifts in mood and song phrasing, SFFS plot a winding trajectory for their tortured protagonist that goes to remarkable extremes. From the cold spoken word performances to fiery screamo fits of rage, this album is an emotional roller coaster.

The band’s uncompromising vision, in all its swings and dives, is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, SFFS have pushed the boundaries of their genre, invoking post-rock song structures and avant-garde experimentation to head into territory roamed by the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor. And just as Godspeed’s ambition was stark naked, SFFS may too drive many away with long song durations, unusual and extensive use of dialog samples and the general insularities that come from making a concept album. If you are not willing to listen to this in its hour-plus entirety, then there is simply no point in putting it on. It’s ready-made for intense introspection, to be taken in as a unified artistic experience. For all its difficulties though, Blazing Fires is highly original and compelling, plunging into a tragic saga that will, if given the chance, tug at your heart and imagination.

Happy Canada Day everyone. Take the time to enjoy the places and people that make this country great.

Like Neil Young for starters. Here is “Heart of Gold” from 1971

Radiohead Live. This song is from Kid A.

That there
Thats not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the liffey
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here

In a little while
Ill be gone
The moments already passed
Yeah its gone
And I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here

Strobe lights and blown speakers
Fireworks and hurricanes
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here

Sigur Ros. Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust . 2008. 3.5 stars .

Iceland’s Sigur Ros have become synonymous with 21st century post-rock and for good reason. Initially stirring their brooding, neo-classical travels in the same icy gloom as innovators Godspeed You Black Emperor, Labradford etc, Sigur Ros added a strange endearing twist - soothing, choir-like vocals that lent their drama an air of hope and innocence, emotions the underground shunned and forgot. As a result, Sigur Ros, with all their E.T.-like charm, came out of the darkness and into popular consciousness, eventually lending tunes to apocalyptic films like Children of Men and Vanilla Sky . Deservedly, their breakthrough album Ágætis byrjun has been deemed as essential as Radiohead’s Kid A or My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless , as it carved out a sound that was harrowing, innovative and heartbreakingly beautiful. After such a strong impression on the world’s stage, pressure on the band surmounted. Where would they go next?

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