My friends have a record out!

Just as a preface, I never post a record if I don't think it's killer regardless of who made it. This blog has always been and always will be reserved for the purpose of presenting people with records that I believe have a lot of value musically and emotionally. Posts will never, ever be intended to massage someone's ego. As such, it's testament to the quality of a friend's work if it finds its way onto this blog.

All the Empires of the World - Last Rites EP

All the Empires of the World is a three-man project based in Nottingham. Last Rites is the latest release of theirs and their first 'official' release through a label. It's always easiest to define a band like this by the heavier parts of their sound, but Last Rites has as much light in its sound as dark. It is not a "post-metal" record. There is way more going on here than Isis/Neurosis/Pelican [delete as appropriate] worship - as much attention is given to the properties of each sound and how it resonates as is given to the riffs themselves. These explorations of ambience give the record a cavernous sense of space that makes it sound freaking huge. 'Prophecy at the Ruins', as the title suggests, sets an apocalyptic tone, starting with the slow pounding of a bass drum that is met by long peals of rumbling guitar that sound like a call to prayer from deep within some enormous temple. Instead of the release of tension that we'd expect, the rumbling gives way to a sequence of subdued fingerpicked chords that make the eventual release of tension even more worthwhile. These quieter passages on Last Rites have a considered, dreamy quality to them that reminds me a lot of the calmer moments of maudlin of the Well's music. After the long build of 'Prophecy at the Ruins', the music finally erupts in 'Simon Helen Elizabeth (The Gate)' with the kind of music that Pelican should be writing these days - proudly triumphant riffs shrouded in enormous swathes of ambience. At the climax of the song the addition of some deeply buried vocals within the wall of sound works as a really great finishing touch. These two songs work as a kind of suite, but are followed by a similarly great reinterpretation of one of their older songs '...Will be Laid to Waste' which manages to sound strikingly different from the original version and yet still as great.

In terms of the actual meaning behind the record it might be best to quote Mark directly:

"This record is a testament to finding the best in everything - it was influenced by my brother and two sisters and their complex and wonderful lives. Denial of the spirit is denial of the self."

I'm not in the position to extrapolate further about the emotional content of Last Rites but one thing that is obvious is that it is clearly a very personal record. This, combined with the attention to detail in the writing, recording and mixing makes it a very rewarding listen, and I will recommend it to anyone who is interested in records that explore the possibilities within the outer fringes of heavy music.

It can be downloaded for free from Records on Ribs, a great Nottingham-based record label run by a bunch of lovely people who release high-quality music for free online under Creative Commons licensing. While you're downloading this record, check out the rest of the acts on their site too, there's some great stuff there - some of my favourites include EL Heath's ambient work and the Talk Talk-esque melancholy of Les Étoiles.

All The Empires of the World - Last Rites

2008: Gregor Samsa - Rest

To put this record in context, Gregor Samsa started out as a band that took a heavy influence from moody, snail-paced indie-rockers Low and combined it with a love for orchestral post-rock in the vein of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The product was something quite simple in its build-build-climax approach, even possibly quite generic, but nevertheless something startlingly emotional and affecting. In fact, their previous full-length 55:12 was quite a special record for me in that it soundtracked a few months when I was in a very vulnerable place emotionally, and so songs like 'Makeshift Shelters' and 'Lessening' still hold great significance for me in the associations they bring up when i hear them.

It came as a pleasant surprise to me earlier on this year when I read a newspost saying that Toby Driver and Mia Matsumiya of Kayo Dot, among other musicians that I admire, would be making appearances on Gregor Samsa's new outing, Rest. And, from the moment that I heard the opening track 'The Adolescent', it was evident to me that here was a new, more mature and more restrained version of the band. Gone are the sweeping string crescendos and obvious post-rock buildups, replaced by a careful, controlled sense of composition that sounds not far off from the tendencies of chamber classical music. The instrumentation is carefully chosen: 'The Adolescent' opens with a glockenspiel intro, soon accompanied by a chiming piano and then Toby Driver's delicate woodwind arrangements. Keyboards then enter, and the band's gorgeous vocal harmonies provide the icing on the cake and turn it into something really quite beautiful. As is evident here and throughout the rest of the album, the band are still using the crescendo as one of their main tools, but this time around it's a lot more subtle and clever, using minimalist repetition and subtle progression to great effect instead of the bigger post-rock guns that used to be in their arsenal. Where guitars used to be their weapon of choice, pianos now provide the anchor for most of the songs on Rest, a decision that is quite refreshing in a genre that has somewhat exhausted the possibilities of what you can do with a guitar and a delay pedal. This minimalistic tendency is particularly evident on centrepiece 'Jeroen Van Aken'. The first half is, perhaps, the section on Rest the most reminiscent of previous releases by Gregor Samsa - slow, moody, and utterly heartwrenching balladry. This leads onto an even more hushed but just as devastating second half that works through the repetition and slight change of the same line, culminating on the line "All things come and go/but we won't, no we won't, break". It's not immediately obvious stuff, but with close listening, it's so affecting.

My personal favourite on the album is the beautiful but bleak 'Pseudonyms'. Probably the moodiest piece on the album, it is a reflection on, among other things, futility and loneliness. The song progresses slowly but towards the end climaxes in a lovely and understated crescendo where gorgeous clarinet lines are played over shimmering pianos. Ambience is also used elsewhere in the album - as a segue between songs, or, in the case of 'Company', a full blown excursion into Stars of The Lid-esque guitar ambience territory. Rest is, indeed, a very varied album instrumentally and benefits hugely from it. But, above that, its careful restraint means that not everything is immediately apparent, something that affects the replay value as the album really must be listened quite closely to in order for its real beauty to show itself. For those who are fans of post-rock, classical music, moody indie-rock or just about anything you could describe with the word 'lovely', Rest is highly recommended from me as one of the most beautiful and heartmelting albums of 2008.

Murderous art has its grips on me - can't wrap myself around internally. I can't seem to put my name on anything. Our innocence yields to American dreams. Our innocence yields to pathetic conceit. Our innocence yields when our pocket's empty. The softest hearts break when the deed is done. I'll patiently wait for new days to come, then I'll wake and rise to write another song. Our innocence yields when we do it alone. The exodus begins now. I'll travel 'round and find you once more. You're reaching out less than before, but I know you're there.
-Gregor Samsa; Pseudonyms

Gregor Samsa - Rest

By the way - if any of you do enjoy what I post here, don't be afraid to leave a comment and say so! It's nice to know when your work is being read and when other people share your enthusiasm :)

2008: Fennesz - Black Sea

This should really be far higher up on the list but I've been enjoying it so much recently that I decided it was best to strike while the iron's hot. For those not in the know, Christian Fennesz is an Austrian electronica artist that masterfully meshes glitch, noise and ambience to create collages of sound that are as wonderful as they are difficult to pigeonhole. His highly lauded 2001 effort Endless Summer incorporated a subdued but evident pop sensibility into his work, the album's playful, glitchy and initially abrasive exterior eventually giving way to an underlying tranquility with repeated listens. Venice moved towards slightly more peaceful waters but was still very much the product of a man enamoured, in a slightly abstract sense, with pop music: this was most notable on 'Transit', where David Sylvian's guest vocals turned what would otherwise be a wash of Fennesz noise into a beautifully melancholy ballad.

Black Sea, however, sees the maestro completing his swing towards abstraction: taking a much more compositional approach, the new album, as the press release puts it, goes for the "slow reveal" method over Endless Summer and Venice's more song-based structures. This is, in all sorts of ways, a brilliant move: moving away from the repetition of previous song structures allows for a much more vast and expansive sound. One only needs to listen to the ten-minute title track for affirmation of this. Fennesz's music has always had quite a visual element to it, painting beautiful pictures in your head as you listen, and on Black Sea this is more evident than ever: the introductory swell of noise morphs into something sweeping and grandiose, giving the impression of a vast expanse of violent, crashing sea. The clicks and whirrs and abrasive sheets of static soon fade quite abruptly as we, the listeners, are pulled under the surface of the waves, down into the echoey depths of Fennesz's sonic sea, the crashing of the waves beating down in the distance. And suddenly all is peaceful: gentle sweeps of guitar ambience grace our ears and purposefully picked-out notes on an acoustic guitar reverberate wonderfully, providing a reassuring organic quality that would have otherwise been lost in all the sheets of fuzz.

That's one particularly impressive thing about Black Sea as an album: for a piece of experimental electronic music it comes across as surprisingly organic and human; bottomless in its depth and full of sweeping emotion. This may be due to Fennesz's immense attention to detail and recording technique: during the recording of the album, he reports that he experimented greatly with the quality of different rooms and microphones. As a result, each sound resonates in just the right way, creating whole open spaces with layers of echoing noise and distant, fragmented melody. Speaking of melody, that's another thing about Black Sea: where with previous releases Fennesz would have relatively obvious tunes anchoring his songs, this latest release is a lot more abstract for most of its duration, instead placing a lot more emphasis on texture and atmosphere, allowing the songs to build and envelop the listener. This is not, by any means, background music: Black Sea is an album to listen to on headphones and lose yourself completely in. There is so much going on at any given moment - distant rumblings, soft sheets of noise, washes of guitar, echoing strings, even prepared pianos - that the album is a totally engaging listen throughout. There are entire worlds within these sounds, ready to be explored.

My favourite thing about Fennesz is the sheer capacity for emotion and reflection within his sculptures of sound, and Black Sea is in this respect particularly powerful. The best pieces of music have the ability to say things that words cannot adequately express. 'Glide' does this perfectly: building ever so gently, it's easy to let your thoughts wander throughout its duration, but there's a moment halfway through where it subtly but powerfully hits home - and at that point it transports me completely, dredging up all sorts of memories floating around in my mind, reminding me of things, people and places that i miss, or that i've lost and that i wish i could have back. 'Vacuum' has a similarly intoxicating sense of melancholy throughout that lends itself very well to introspection and reflection.

While it's not the kind of thing that I'd like to come back to too often because of its sheer emotional weight, and while this is a purely subjective thing that others may not find here, there is a certain beauty in discovering pieces of music like this that can have such a strong emotional effect. And for all its emotional weight, its all-encompassing atmosphere and its beautiful complexity, Black Sea is one of the most fascinating and rewarding pieces of music released this year. If you have the patience to lie down with some headphones and lose yourself in its sound for a while, you will, with any luck, find the payoff immensely gratifying.

Fennesz - Black Sea