Seabuckthorn - The Silence Woke Me

(Bookmaker Records, 2012)

Seabuckthorn is one of those artists best enjoyed over the course of an album rather than in small doses and on this latest release his impressionistic acoustic guitar work once again manages to conjure up dreamy landscapes, campfires and woodlands, all with his signature sense of menace and foreboding. The Silence Woke Me is Andy Cartwright's second album for French label Bookmaker Records but is at least his fifth release (not taking into account various self-released EPs and small-runs of mini CDs) and at this point in time Cartwright is a masterful composer. Building upon last year's excellent In Nightfall, The Silence Woke Me weaves a lot more rhythm into the mix, drums adding heft to Cartwright's 12-string flourishes, and even going so far as to introduce a pretty funky groove to final duo 'Gathered and Unkempt' and 'Good Honest Thievery.' While Cartwright's music has always flirted between atmospheric minimalism and frantic, multi-instrumental frenzy, the layered, rhythmic approach applied here strikes a perfect balance between scarcity and bombast which gives the album a more dynamic feel as a whole. And while it's not a term that really applies to the kind of music Seabuckthorn makes, The Silence Woke Me has more 'hooks' than anything he has done in years. Many of the songs elegantly shimmy in from silence and build tantra-like before reaching a central pattern of notes around which the guitar meanders – 'As Fire Moves', 'The Cool of the Coming Dark' and the closing track all find repetitions which give the songs a heated, hypnotic feel. The cymbal washes and relentless stomp of 'It Swept Across the Open' creep up on you before you realise you're in the centre of a storm of arpeggiating guitars and reverb-drenched notes that sound like whale song. The 12-string acoustic is the binding force that patches together not only all the songs of the album, but also elements like drums and shruti box – a kind of droning, Indian harmonium, played by sometime-collaborator Duncan Scott.

Where fellow Oxford-based instrumental prodigy Jerome 'Message to Bears' Alexander's pastoral chamber folk evokes a sense of child-like nostalgia, Cartwright is like Jerome's feral brother, raised in the forest by wolves. His music, while equally evocative, feels exotic and otherwordly; it invites you in with it's warm, campfire tones but leads you on a journey through treacherous, bizarre landscapes, all under the cover of darkness with only fire and moonlight illuminating you on your way. 

[Originally published in Nightshift Magazine, issue 207, October 2012] 

http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2012/oct.pdf

Swans - The Seer

(Young God, 2012)

The return of Swans has to rank among the least cynical of comebacks/reunions/rebirths of any band in recent years – few bands command as much respect and fear (in fairly equal measure) as Michael Gira’s merry circus of outcasts and deviants, and The Seer is nothing if not a huge statement of intent. Only a handful of musicians retain the youthful fire of experimentalism in their bellies for so long, and for a man approaching sixty Gira has to be up there with Tom Waits and John Cale in terms of being a restless musical innovator, continuing to make interesting music while his contemporaries are getting ready to claim their pensions. The Seer is the culmination of thirty-years of ear-shattering, soul-crushing musical experience in an often overwhelming but awe-inspiring two-hour package.

Starting with something of a curve-ball, opening track ‘Lunacy’ is a lush orchestra of chiming guitars and Gira’s booming vocals, backed angelically by Low’s Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. But it’s second song ‘Mother of the World’ that brings us into more familiar Swans territory – jarring rhythms? Check. Mind-melting repetition? Check. Slowly creeping sense of bewildering insanity as layers of ambient noise and freak-out vocals weave in and out of your speakers? Oh yes. The song’s overtly sexual lyrics (another Swans hallmark) are drilled into your brain with a repetition that mirrors the music: “In and out and in and out agai-ai-ai-ai-ain.”

The album’s centrepiece is the half-hour title-track which wastes no time in bringing the noise, a kind of drone palindrome, beginning with a racket that most drone bands would take half-an-hour to create before slowly clearing space for a clattering rhythm of twinkling piano, drums and frenetic cymbals, deep hypnotic bass notes and a queasy guitar slide. The song organically warps, twists and turns through prolonged crashes, drawn-out notes and even wailing harmonica before settling into final death-rattle groove, Gira purring “I love you too much” and various maniacally gibberish phrases. More than any other song on the album, the shapeshifting nature of the instrumentation demonstrates the immense skill of Swans in their current incarnation, a line-up that Gira has called the best ever. They cater to every musical whim so naturally – it’s really quite breathtaking.

The band further display their adaptability on ‘The Seer Returns’ which is a kind of blues shuffle, Gira delivering his lyrics like a whisky-voiced beat poet. In stark contrast ’93 Ave. B Blues’ is pure feral, nightmare noise – all swooning low-end, crashing cymbals and crying discordant strings. ‘A Piece of the Sky’ begins with nine minutes of drone before relaxing into a longing, melodic stomp and finishing with a Velvet Underground/Silver Jews-like twisted pop song. It’s one of the most lush moments on the album, an unexpectedly beautiful symphony of bells, pianos, mandolin, and a bouncing bassline with Gira crooning wonderfully. It turns out to be the final respite before album closer ‘The Apostate.’ It lulls you into a false sense of security with a relatively tense but chilled beginning but then six minutes in the band let rip. Screeching, headache-inducing guitars, crashes and a bizarre free jazz outro bring this dizzying, rollercoaster of an album to a close.

Swans are not a band known to make easy records and The Seer is no exception. For starters, it’s two hours long; some tracks contain sections of pure noise and feedback that are longer than some bands’ entire songs and the album includes songs that are longer than some bands’ entire albums. That being said, The Seer balances the classic abrasive Swans sound with moments of elegant beauty. The second disc opens with a straight-up country track, ‘Song for a Warrior’ which features Karen O on vocals, and is the prettiest track on the album, particularly when Gira joins in with backing vocals towards the end of the song. When Michael Gira said that he had utilised everything he had learnt in the last thirty years making this album you can hear that it’s true. Swans don’t need to make another Cop – they’ve made The Seer, a mature album from the mind of a man who refuses to grow old quietly.

[Originally published by the Sleeping Shaman, 21/09/2012]
Swans - The Seer

Samothrace - Reverence to Stone

(20 Buck Spin, 2012)

Releasing albums with the same tectonic urgency that they propel their songs along with, Seattle’s Samothrace have recently released their second album, Reverence to Stone, four years after debut album Life’s Trade. This album has been highly tipped as one of the finest doom records of the year and I must admit that it was this fanfare, rather than a previous knowledge of the band, which tempted me to review it. Having had a good while to absorb the record, it would seem that this two track, 35 minute epic of an album has earned its praise in what must surely be considered a vintage year for doom and sludge metal.

Samothrace distinguish themselves from the rest of the sludge/doom pack in quite subtle ways when taken at face-value but over the course of the album they leave a distinct impression through the awesome breadth of their compositions. They’re not so slow and sparse as to draw Sunn O))) comparisons and not as reckless and unruly as riff-bringers like Eyehategod but Samothrace do occupy some kind of middle-ground between the two camps; on the one hand they’ve pensive, emotional and tense and on the other they offer up a huge, aggressive storm of guitar action and tortured vocals, held together by the atmospheric clatter of drums.

Reverence to Stone has been a long time coming due to the band relocating from Kansas to Seattle and subsequently recruiting a new drummer, as well as former guitarist Renata Castagna. This jolt spurred the band back into action and forced them to overcome personal problems to finish the 20-minute epic “A Horse of Our Own” and rewrite “When We Emerged”, a song which originally appeared on their 2007 demo.

Something about the melody that opens “When We Emerged” is instantly familiar and it soon gets carried away on the wings of a mighty, lofty riff above waves of dissonance, distortion and decay; the song has a sweeping elegance without betraying the underlying crushing core of the band’s sound. The combination of ambience, melody and menace, not to mention Bryan Spinks’ disturbing howl, brings to mind Eagle Twin but only as a reference point – Samothrace are their own beast.

“A Horse of Our Own” begins with a lot of sludge-doom swagger and blues bombast, with solos recalling (of all people) legendary Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel (particularly “Maggot Brain”) and a generally destructive emotional feel before giving way to a lengthy quiet section, which in turn erupts and then settles back into another malaise before a final wind throws the ashes back in the air for one last doom waltz. It’s an amazing track, one that truly confounds presumptions about doom or sludge being repetitive or whatever; the song goes places, creates emotional atmospheres and rocks hard too.

These two tracks are definitely companion pieces – they share a certain desperate, hopeful/hopeless mood – and it’s hard not to think of them in terms of the personal turmoil that has been a part of the band’s life in the four years since Life’s Trade came out. This gives Reverence to Stone an ultimately triumphant feel when it’s all said and done – a sense that they survived, and they fucking conquered. There are moments of despair, certainly, but Reverence to Stone could be seen as the light at the end of the tunnel, and Samothrace are suddenly huge contenders in the sludge/doom world once again.

[Originally published by the Sleeping Shaman, 06/09/2012]

http://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/album-reviews/s/samothrace-reverence-to-stone-cd-lp-2012/