CLXXIX. Paavoharju | Yhä Hämärää

PAAVOHARJU

Yhä Hämärää

©Fonal. Suomen Tasavalta, 2005.

‟My notion of "Christian music" was built from my experiences in church sermons and Christian summer camp and it's agonising acoustic sing-alongs about some deep philosophical insight about a cloth made out of rags. Thankfully Paavoharju doesn't take cues from that most of the time, but more from traditional finnish hymns, without the soul crushingly boring sermons.

Yhä hämärää is like listening to a cassette you found lying inside a table drawer inside a lone abandoned wooden house somewhere in the Finnish Carelian countryside on a cold autumn day. A soundtrack to some old loner's melancholic memories. From touching lo-fi post-rock - "Valo tihkuu kaiken läpi" being a prime example and top pick - to folk acoustics with glitch electro sprinkled on top. What comes to comparisons, Xinlisupreme comes closest with their more calmer tunes. (Indeed, some surfing on Paavoharju reveals them as a confessed influence.)

The album doesn't have any real flaws, some tracks maybe being a bit too vague to make them memorable. But as a whole, it's definitely an experience, the album also not suffering from "let's cram stuff in this CD to it's full capacity" syndrome, which is always a plus in my book. And it sure beats those annoying sing-alongs. Something even a confessed atheist can enjoy.‟

Cthulhu

CXXXIII. Current 93 | Earth Covers Earth

CURRENT 93

Earth Covers Earth

©Durtro. UK, 1992.

‟As most of you know by now, I'm a wee bit of a C93 obsessive.  Well this album is to blame for that I'm afraid, this was my introduction to their warped and twisted world.  Not an album I'd recommend as a starting point, but a damn fine listen nonetheless, this album was released when C93 were still trying to find their folky feet, and David Tibet was trying to discover his true voice.

The original release is only 6 tracks long, starting with versions of "The Dilly Song", a simple nursery rhyme, sung unaccompanied.  "Hourglass" makes two appearances, one narrated/sung by David Tibet, one narrated by a child's voice.  The lyrics are from a 17th century poem by John Hall, showing that Tibet yet wasn't really confident in using his own poetry, but also using Hall's words perfectly to deliver his message.  The only genuine C93 classic from this original set of tracks, is "Rome (for Douglas P)", a live favourite still, a folky singalong of a song, which would have graced an album such as Thunder Perfect Mind.

The additional tracks on the CD version, really make this release the 5 star release that it is.  The two versions of "At the Blue Gates of Death" are both essential, beautiful recordings.  One version is a shorter, paranoid vision of a song, with grinding backwards bass, the other, a gorgeous happy ode to a life well lived, you can feel the sun shining on your face as Rose McDowall's backing vocals perfectly complement Tibet's relaxed delivery.  "God Has Three Faces and Wood Has no Name", "She is Dead and all Fall Down" are two more slightly bonkers tracks, which would both fit perfectly on TPM.
Final track "The Dream Moves of the Sleeping King" really has no place on this, or any other C93 album.  That's not to say it's worthless, far from it, but it really is a Nurse with Wound style track, a long surreal melange of sounds, I can't see Tibet having had much input on it, it sounds practically all Stapleton to me.‟

DarknessFish



 

CXXIII. Boyd Rice And Friends | Music, Martinis, And Misanthropy

BOYD RICE AND FRIENDS

Music, Martinis, And Misanthropy

©NER. UK, 1990.

‟I’ve been amused, confused and infused with the works and ideology of Boyd Rice. I’ve never been able to decide if Mr. Rice was as dark as the character he presents himself or if he was simply playing devil’s advocate, but I’d like believe that within all his proclamations that he was being honest, and that I wasn’t wrong for agreeing with him. I’ve always enjoyed his spoken-word messages because it wasn’t free-love hipsters preaching socialism. Combined with the moody, beautiful guitar ambience of Douglas P., Boyd Rice is given the chance to  really bring sense of calmness to the ears, allowing full hypnosis while his gentle voice encourages you to indulge on hate, take notice at life’s ugliness and except that most people are useless. The perfect example of this method at use is the track people. As well as being a ‘Boyd Rice and Friends’ classic, this song really exemplifies the subject matter, the intent, and the methods of this instigating poet. Along with help by Michael Moynihan, and the angelic vocals of Rose McDowall this is truly an intriguing record with infectious sounds capes, provocative commentary, and a sense of taboo enjoyment that anyone can love to hate. Boyd Rice and Friends is a classic example of what happens when you bring together a bunch or angry men sporting facist wardrobes, dark music and apparently hate everybody.‟

Deathmetaltyler 

CXVIII. Crescent | Electronic Sound Constructions

CRESCENT

Electronic Sound Constructions

©Snapshot. UK, 1997.

‟Crescent is a project launched by Matt Jones of Bristol's Movietone. Their debut singles, 'Lost' (Planet, 1994) and 'Sun' (Planet, 1994), sound like stately garage-rock played by Spacemen 3. Jones plays guitar and fronts a rock quartet on 'Now' (Atavistic, 1996), that serves more convoluted compositions, such as 'Exit and Light Will Pour From Our Eyes'. The aim of the band is not clear, though, as their noise-rock does not coalesce in a "style". And Jones' vocals are not exactly engaging (a dull imitation of Joy Division's Curtis).

The question mark remains after listening to 'Electronic Sound Constructions' (Snapshot, 1997), which is de facto Jones' first solo album. Jones plays all instruments and employs tape loops, but the music is amateurish and pointless, especially for ambitious tracks like the 14-minute 'Philicorda Loops' and the industrial mess 'Quince Flowers'.‟
 

Scaruffi

CXIII. Lustmord | Carbon / Core

LUSTMORD

Carbon/Core

©Happy Pencil. US, 2004.

‟'The Intense Humming of Evil' is a song by the Manic Street Preachers about the Holocaust, but it could just as well have been used as a phrase to describe the music of Lustmord. The album opens with evil booming sounds from the ninth layer of hell, and from there on it just gets scarier! I really dislike to use cheesy cinematic metaphors to describe music, but Brian Warner leaves me no choice. His music is made on the sole purpose of evoking fear, and fear have many ugly and beautiful faces. "The Conflict of Symbols" is like taking a walk trough Silent Hill: On the surface everything's dark and decayed, and deep, deep down under the surface you can hear grinding machinery. "Beneath" is simply one of the creepiest things I've experienced: the first 2-3 minutes are calm albeit sinister, and then the evil grunting sounds show up in the background, like maggots digging into human flesh, and slowly and gradually twists the song into a Lovecraftian nightmare.

Of course, not everything Lustmord touches turns into gold. The concluding track might sound a little like rejected sound-experiments for a canceled horror movie (Brian W. works in Hollywood after all), but I'll give extra pluss points for the majestetic "Born of Cold Light" which is one rare occasion where the light forces outweights the darkness of evil. A soulful journey trough interdimensional realms to a dying galaxy - it might be among his best tracks. And 'Carbon/Core' as an album is definitely among Lustmord's best, if not THE best - just as good as the more well known 'Heresy' and 'The Place Where The Black Stars Hang'.‟

Hitherto

CII. Eva O | Past Time

EVA O

Past Time 

©Cleopatra. US, 1993.

‟Goth chanteuse Eva O. is perhaps best known for her contributions to the Rozz Williams version of Christian Death, though she also worked with several other bands and managed a solo career as well. Born Eva Ortiz, she grew up in a strongly Catholic military family, spending the majority of her childhood in Las Vegas. She had a troubled childhood and found solace in playing the guitar, eventually moving to Los Angeles to pursue rock & roll. In 1980, she founded a punky, all-female hard rock group called the Speed Queens, who were inspired in part by the Runaways. Wanting to take music more seriously than some of her bandmates, she soon left to form the Superheroines with bassist Jill Emery. This group earned a following on L.A.'s so-called death rock scene of the early '80s, which also included goth-flavored bands like .45 Grave and Christian Death. In fact, the Super Heroines made their recorded debut alongside those bands on 1981's Hell Comes to Your House compilation, and O. supplied the female backing vocals on Christian Death's debut album, Only Theatre of Pain.

The Super Heroines recorded two albums of their own, Cry for Help and Souls That Save, for the small local label Bemis Brain over 1982-1983. A third album was begun but never completed, and O. officially disbanded the Superheroines in 1987, when she married original (and, by this time, former) Christian Death singer Rozz Williams. The couple moved to San Francisco and started the goth rock outfit Shadow Project, moving the group back to Los Angeles in 1990. In the meantime, Williams -- who'd founded Christian Death but left in 1985 -- revived the name to compete with the current version of Christian Death, and made O. the guitarist and female vocalist.

Thanks to those two projects, O.'s recorded legacy expanded substantially in the early '90s. Shadow Project issued two studio albums (1991's Shadow Project and 1992's Dreams for the Dying) plus a live set, In Tuned Out; the Williams-led Christian Death, meanwhile, released an album of re-recordings of early material, The Iron Mask, plus two albums of new material, 1993's Path of Sorrows and 1994's The Rage of Angels. Around this time, O. grew interested in a solo career, and to help grease the skids, Cleopatra issued the 1993 career retrospective Past Time, which featured material from her days with the Speed Queens, the Super Heroines, and Christian Death, as well as three new solo songs.

Released in 1994, O.'s proper solo debut was a shocking revelation for many longtime fans: she had converted to Christianity, and crafted a born-again concept album titled Demons Fall for an Angel's Kiss. Credited to the Eva O. Halo Experience, it featured prominent musical support from producer Johnny Indovina. O. eventually divorced Rozz Williams, who had been battling heroin addiction, but the two remained close, and reunited as Shadow Project for the mostly acoustic album From the Heart in 1998; sadly, Williams committed suicide that April. The following year, O. issued her second proper solo album, Damnation, on the small Massacre label; it continued her Christian spiritual preoccupation.‟

Fields Of Haze

LXXIII. Dollboy | Ghost Stations

DOLLBOY

Ghost Stations

©Second Language. UK, 2010.

‟Una ‘Estación fantasma’, de acuerdo a Wikipedia, es la traducción usual de la palabra alemana Geisterbahnhöfe, termino usado para describir ciertas estaciones del metro de Berlín (la U-Bahn y la S-Bahn) que fueron cerradas durante la división de la ciudad durante la Guerra Fría. El término, desde entonces se usa para describir cualquier estación en desuso en una línea de tren subterráneo. Por otro lado, Dollboy es el seudónimo del músico inglés Oliver Cherer, músico con tres discos largos hasta la fecha, para empresas como Static Caravan o Arable. Finalmente, “Ghost Stations / Geisterbahnhöfe” es aquello que une ambos conceptos, es el nombre del último trabajo de Dollboy, el primero para Second Language.

El disco, como era de suponerse, hace referencia a esas estaciones abandonadas, tanto a las de la capital alemana como a las que existen en cerca de su hogar en Londres. Usando grabaciones de campo registradas en lugares antes habitados, lo que Cherer hace es recrear esos parajes donde el encuentro furtivo arriba de un viejo ferrocarril no se produce en mucho tiempo, intentando revivir la atmósfera que existía en esas estaciones que unían acercaban y ciudades sobre explotadas por personas que hoy solo viven en los recuerdos. El álbum solo contiene dos canciones de largo aliento. La más extensa, “Down Street/ York Road/ South Kentish Town/ Brompton Road/ Bull & Bush/ Strand” recorre las estaciones de Londres a través de ciertos toques de jazz pop, según como lo entendía Mark Hollis, pianos de juguete, cajas de música, ambient desolador y pianos muy desolados. “Warschauer Strasse/ Jannowitzbrucke/ Potsdamer Platz/ Oranienburger Strasse/ Unter Den Linden” utiliza mas o menos los mismo recursos, más algo de electrónica casera y algunas trompetas un tanto difusas. En ambos casos, en ambas piezas queda la sensación de oír remembranzas de pasajeros ausentes, el ruido de almas muertas hablando entre paredes gastadas, en forma de la nueva tradición post-clásica, exibiendo las influencias de Brian Eno –la primera vez que Dollboy está tan cerca de él–, electrónica alemana e incluso como apunta la hoja de prensa, con mucha razón, el disco Gavin Bryars “The Sinking of the Titanic” (Obscure, 1975), disco que también intenta recrear habitaciones muertas.

Con sonidos que recurrentemente evocan melodías pretéritas y tonalidades entre sombras, “Ghost Stations / Geisterbahnhöfe”, o el ruido de fondo del subsuelo, esboza siluetas de música espectral. Partituras borrosas para estaciones fantasmas. “He intentado imaginarme los espíritus de aquellos que pudieron haber pasado a través de ellos: persona que viaja diariamente al lugar de trabajo, vividores, espías, y los restos en descomposición de orquestas de baile fantasmales”. El eco del pasado retumbando entre trenes quietos y paredes vacías.‟

 Hawái