BASS COMMUNION "CHIAROSCURO" (Headphone Dust)

An extremely limited (and extremely expensive) CD documenting a rare (the first!) live appearance by Steven Wilson, aka Bass Communion, at a festival curated by the mighty Fear Falls Burning. Across numerous releases Bass Communion is very hard to pin down. The core elements remain the same (bass and drone) but the presentation is always very different and varied, making Steven Wilson's project one of the best of the "laptop" droners-whether you'll get a piece of distorted room crushing bass vomit or some jazz-inflected Tortoise-esque-but-way-better-than-they-could-ever-hope-to-be style post rock, it will almost always be expressive, engaging, textured and interesting. Bass Communion has always rewarded deep listening. So imagine my disappointment at this rather lackluster live outing, perplexing all the more because by any measure Bass Communion should totally DESTROY in the live setting. i don't see how they couldn't. The volume must be an event to behold (at least if the venue's sound system is decent). Since i wasn't there i don't know about the actual volume but the performance on this CD is pretty fucking boring. I've never felt that way about Bass Communion before and like i said, it was sort of shocking. The performance is comprised of two tracks, the opener being a 37 minute snooze-athon dominated by atonal guitar wisps and aggravating rises and falls in volume. The track never gets close to any sort apex despite an ever-present attempt at creating tension and even the sporadic fallbacks to bass-heavy drone-throb do little to alleviate the boredom or advance the piece. It's just kinda there, hanging around, not really caring if you're paying attention or not and not doing anything to really engage you either. The second piece fairs a little better but it's only seven minutes-i guess Steven figured that the audience would lose interest unless he was constantly "changing things up" soundwise. This piece is much more familiar Bass Communion territory and reminds me a lot of the work he did on "Molotov and Haze", the glacial slab of glitch-sludge hell that he recorded for Important Records last year. Unfortunately it ends way too soon, the ladder to transcendence cut off many, many rungs shy of the summit. I don't know if it was first-ever performance jitters or just the hard to accept truth that guys playing laptops live is stupid as hell, but this is pretty much a miss. Even more mysterious is how Steven Wilson can be involved with a band as terrible as Porcupine Tree.

DROWNING THE LIGHT "AN ALIGNMENT OF DEAD STARS" (Avant Garde)

Some bands are the ultimate collector's dream and nightmare: tons upon tons of releases, on shitloads of different labels from different countries, all in limited small runs, all insanely high quality. DROWNING THE LIGHT, an Australian black metal project, are one such band, joining the ranks of acts such as Boris, Nadja and Skullflower in terms of music output to awesomeness ratios. In black metal this frequency of releases is more frowned upon and Drowning the Light has been subject to a number of unwarranted backlashes for their dearth of unobtainable releases. At this point even i can't keep up with the wealth of vinyl releases these guys are putting out, chronologically or financially, and while saddening, i've decided to more or less get what i can when i can. Drowning the Light has never disappointed me with their music, so when i saw a US distributor had this newest album in stock, i jumped on it. The bad news is that because i overdrafted my check card paying for this (my own fault) this album actually ended up costing me about fifty dollars. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Limited to a scant 300 copies worldwide (although there's no numbering on this CD, which bugs me a bit) this is easily one of Drowning the Light's strongest statements artistically. There's a good 70 minutes of music here, making this one of their longest albums as well. Let me throw a deluge of monikers towards you to describe this stuff: this is vampyric aristocratic romantic depressive raw black metal of the most elite style. It's obvious that the gentlemen behind Drowning the Light absolutely live and breathe black metal. It's their lifesblood, a complete and ruling passion, combined with a deep historical knowledge of the genre and the ability to replicate and advance a sound that hasn't been accurately reproduced since Darkthrone's "Transylvanian Hunger." Yes, the spectre of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto looms weightily over Drowning the Light, and no other band has tapped into the frigid primitivism of black metal in years. This is church burning music, forest dwelling etudes that hearken a welcoming of an early age, a statement of utter rejection and disdain for modern culture and its values, an homage to the Northern climes and all their icy solitude (and no, i have not forgotten that this band is from Australia). This is simply masterful songwriting, drenched in uncomplicated melodies and headbanging garage production. When people talk about "cult" black metal, this is one of the sounds they're referring to. With no interest in interacting with the scene at large, Drowning the Light are making black metal for the sake of the art alone, a desire to keep the fires in the heart blazing, to hold the torch aloft and see the that the banner flies high and the flame never goes extinguished. "An Alignment of Dead Stars" achieves the hypnotism of "Filosofem" while reaching the emotional gravitation of Shining's most frightening confessions and the sheer beauty of Mogwai's naked guitar deconstructionism, while on the other hand they're able to write music of such anthemic simplicity that the Ramones would give applause. Totally flooring, one of the best albums from a band whose discography is vomiting gold.

LUSTRE "NIGHT SPIRIT" (De Tenebrarum Principio)

Earthen and oceanic both, this the absolute best sort of black metal album. Slow and ethereal, bogging down under the weight of its own floating dreaminess, stumbling but forceful, uncomplicated and utterly hypnotic. Entrancing. Otherworldly. This is the door that Varg Vikernes was forcing open with Burzum and this is what so few people understand. It isn't about racism or purity or nationalism or paganism. It isn't about anti-religion, nor is it even about people and their concerns. It's so beyond that. It's a gate and a mirror. The CD tray states that it's "Awing Art of Northern Nature" and that is exactly correct. This is power, this a force that always existed, before us. A force that will exist long after we're gone, long after every living thing has vanished. It's the power of time and age, the majesty of existence and other styles of consciousness and awakening. It's the dwarfing beauty of nature. Burzum was the first band to truly recognize it and try to pay homage to it, to offer a form of devotion unfettered. This album by Lustre is one of the best records i've ever heard upholding Burzum's vision and while some would view that as a detraction, as some sort of criticism, perhaps against Lustre's originality or intent, i can only applaud the effort and give it my highest possible recommendation. This is almost everything i look for in black metal. Entrancing, repetitive, cyclical song structures, forcing narcoleptic meditation within the listener. Deep, lush tones and cavernous production soaked in reverb. The guitars on this recording are massive, all-enveloping. They sound like waterfalls. Each timbre separate yet acting as part of the whole, the onslaught of watery gushing sound. The vocals are a grisly rasp, sounding like the sickly exclamations of some dying adder buried underneath a mound of mud and leaves while rain pours down from the grey chilled skies above. Keyboards cloak the whole record in their warming, foreboding mists, glossing over everything and holding it in a cloudy swath of medieval melody. Icy clavichord/piano notes cry out from amongst it all, leading you down a path that only spirals further inward. It all keeps going and going, stretching out to a utopian endlessness. Forty minutes isn't enough. It feels like i could listen to this for the rest of my life. This is so much more than music. It is that, an extremely accomplished piece of it, but it is so much larger. This a lamentation for an age, a showing of respect for a force much greater than us, a mourning for what's been lost, buried by modernity and progress. It's a call from the night, from under a shroud of clouds and moons, from beneath the scream of the wind and the eternal dark of ancient forests. Masterful.

GRIM FUNERAL "A GRIM FUNERAL TO THE SOUL OF THIS WORLD" (Total Holocaust)

Isolation is a terrifying extreme. The feeling that you're cut off from everything, that no one understands you or can empathize with you, the idea you are without friend and more or less alone in the universe-it's a harrowing and horrifying experience. From a psychological perspective isolationism goes hand in hand with arrogance and oftentimes accompanies depression, leading to increased thoughts of worthlessness and suicidal impulses. From an artistic perspective, isolationism can yield amazing work that is completely devoid of interference, art from a place that others have a hard time reaching. Certainly geographic location plays an important part in the creation of music. Sound is tied to place or origin as much as it is individual ideas and influence. Nowhere is this idea more clear than in the world of black metal. Norwegian BM sounds distinctly different from Swedish BM, which is worlds away from French BM, which is nothing like the sound of US BM (whose actual "sound" is still a matter of argument). As far reaching as the tendrils of black metal are, there are still those corners of the world where it hasn't permeated, where BM artists are rare, where there's no clear cut "sound" to link to, where the only references are the artist's own ideas and the records that they may or may not have heard. Be Persecuted from China, Pyha from the Koreas and Enecare from Ireland are all good examples of this sort of musical isolationism. Another amazing example comes in the form of Grim Funeral, an entity from the romantic wastes of Spain, whose approach to BM is firmly rooted in classicism yet is uniquely individual. My first experience with Grim Funeral was their split album with Ghesteenland, a challenging, lengthy, cold record whose dissonance and crudeness could be seen as off-putting to all but fervent worshipers of Ved Buens Ende and the Black Legions. Now comes the full length on Total Holocaust, five tracks of shrieking banshee-esque BM demanding to be taken on their own artistic terms with little compromise in terms of sound. This is trebly, icy BM-the guitars are drenched in reverb, chorus and echoes while the programmed drums hammer relentlessly away with mechanical inhuman precision. Not especially technical but nowhere near amateur either. The vocals are all over the map-most of the time a chilly scream freezing above the callous music landscape, clouding across the songs like a knifing rain, other times a droning croak of bile and vomit. The music references the grandiosity of Emperor with none of the pomp-songs are complex, long and melodically confusing but never overbearing-the notes just don't go where your ears want them to go. What you know is thrown away in favor of a more distanced approach. Atmosphere is important, but again, never the focus-keyboards are omnipresent but always just behind, cradling and fleshing out. The echoes do most of the work. As the album reaches its concluding apex the mark of Xasthur becomes ever more apparent as the guitars become more distant and washed out, the pace more industrialized and hyperplodding. This record is massive step forward from the split material, especially in terms of production. Whether this ushers in a new style of BM remains to be seen, and what relation this album has to the overall sound of Spanish BM remains a mystery as well, at least until more albums surface. What you can be sure of is that this is an entity all its own, the touchstones obvious but never ripped off. The album cover suggests to me a declaration of war, a military stance, and in some ways the music reflects that idea-there is certainly little reprieve to be found here, even in the final drumless track of guitars and screams, but what war is being declared on isn't clear. The listener? The "scene"? Contemporaries? Life in general? Grim Funeral offer no opinion, only a strange, dissonant work of BM art birthed from their own torments. Not a masterpiece but totally an entity to watch.

ANGELO BADALAMENTI/DAVID LYNCH "MULHOLLAND DRIVE" (Milan)

Aside from the two "Twin Peaks" collections, this is easily the best collaborative work from Badalamenti and Lynch, serving as an exact evocation of the mysterious, ominous mood of the film as well as an amazing, gorgeous album in it's own right. Rarely do i feel that soundtracks succeed as records because too often someone else's hand is involved in choosing material and things become way too disjointed-the selections don't make any sense, or they veer too far from the film's aesthetic. Music has always been important to David Lynch-so much so that he's stated that his films need to be watched with intense surround sound volume, in pitch darkness, to achieve his desired effect-and that dedication to serving the film beyond the screen has resulted in a truly mesmerizing, immersive album experience. The album opens with "Jitterbug," a play on big band music complete with booming dance drums and subdued brass flourishes. Right away the mood is there. It's completely Hollywood but there's the lurking darkness, the notion that things aren't quite right and they will probably very quickly go all fucked up and wrong. After that we're in pure Badalamenti country, plowed under wave after wave of dark synthesizer melodrama and near pitch black ambient throb, lost in the nightsea of memory loss, consumed by passions that we're not quite understanding yet. Just as you're becoming dazed by all the mood Lynch throws a wrench in with a tripler of older rock and roll, culminating with Linda Scott's syrup-sweet rendition of "I've Told Every Little Star," a '60's romp through girl-crush wonderland. It's a song you've really never heard but it's so archetypal that it feels like you've heard it all your life on every oldies station you've ever tuned to. Then it's right back into the black with the twelve minute synth washout of "Dwarfland/Love Theme", a massive sprawl played by Badalamenti and Lynch themselves that's both incredibly creepy and hauntingly, quietly lovely, an intensely immersive piece that succeeds as its own composition apart from the film. Lynch would revisit this direction a few years later on his masterful "Polish Night Music" album, a lengthy exploration of the synthesizer underbelly. The final chunk of the album is the best, to me, starting off with Rebekah Del Rio's scorching, soul-tearing acappella version of Roy Orbison's "Crying." The power of this performance is breathtaking to behold. Because it's in Spanish i'm forced to react only to the delivery and the emotion contained within and it's fucking astonishing. So, so powerful and gorgeous and sad, totally heartcrushing in the best possible way. We're then treated to three songs by David Lynch and John Neff, all droning rockabilly decontructionism filtered through Lynch's skewed eye. "Go Get Some" features some completely ripping guitar noise and skronk vomit from Neff while Lynch holds it down with a repetitive rock line recalling both Duane Eddy and Dick Dale. "Mountains Falling" hits the same lofty highs, with vocals cloaked in echo and delay swirling all throughout the headphones. Rumbling and hypnotic, growling and surly, swaggering with hinted violence and menace. The album closes out with Badalementi's revisiting of both the opening piece and the love theme introduced in "Dwarfland/Love Theme," bringing things back to their melodramatic beginnings. Much like the film itself, themes are revisited and repeated and nothing ever really comes to light-mysteries just keep unveiling themselves, labyrinthine and shadowed, tantalizing you and calling for you to explore. I thnik the picture chosen for the back of the inner booklet sums it up best-Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring staring up into the sky, looking confused, worried and frightened all at once. You just don't know what's going to happen.

THROUGH THE PAIN "TIME HEALS NOTHING" (Total Holocaust)

Sometimes i wish Mark Kozelek would just make a black metal record. His work with Red House Painters and his solo stuff seem to be the template for a lot of depressive/suicidal black metal these days and there's no denying his influence over Through the Pain's debut album. I first ran across this band last year via an extremely limited split they did with Trist (50 copies, of which i possess one)-i had to write to the guy from Through the Pain to get the disc as well as pay an exorbitant shipping fee (cost more than the record!) but i was more than willing to do so, as Trist only shares wax with quality like-minded projects. A year or so later and Through the Pain's 4 song album is out via the mighty Total Holocaust and it's pretty much what i would have expected. Aside from Kozelek the other major influence at work here would be Hypothermia, much more recognizable and looming given that this is a BM record. This is simplistic, repetitive material, recorded poorly, played amateurishly, and begging the question of whether or not it can be taken as a serious statement. The derivations bothered me throughout the first song but as the record progressed, becoming evermore loping and droning and melodic across its four pieces, i came to appreciate the album for its own qualities of melancholy examination. This isn't wrist-slitting music but the sound of frustration, of not understanding. There is a burgeoning counter movement within depressive BM referred to (perhaps jokingly) as "happy" black metal, named after the the brightness and major key modality of the songs. Through the Pain could easily fit under this moniker and this is where i see the Kozelek influence, but you could just as well term it shoegaze BM and be okay. All this genre cross-pollinization just confuses the issue, though, and i think it's used more as a conveyance of sound than an actual musical philosophy. Alcest pretty much ripped a hole in black metal that hasn't been sewn up yet and no one wants to think that the genre can stretch so far and encompass so much without losing identity and meaning. In this regard Through the Pain are treading fairly virgin ground and doing so bravely. These four tracks are pretty far removed from their contribution to the "Black Veils" split-the repetitive elements remain but the sound has been reworked and a new take on depression is being revealed. This isn't song-oriented in the way i feel Lifelover is (nor is it as accomplished) but it's stark and honest. The best thing Through the Pain could do is record their albums better, because these songs deserve more than the tinny, claustrophobic production granted them here. Maybe that's part of the idea, but i'd rather hear all that guitar overblown and piercing, groveling in horror and cracking apart under the weight of its own pop-tinged melodocism.

The Return.

I've decided to start posting here again. I'd like to brush up my reviewing prowess and get back into the habit of listening actively and writing. Expect new posts to follow soon.