Drumming The Beating Heart
©Cherry Red. UK, 1982.
‟After this side one is left almost in ruins, and "Dreaming at Rain" can only really rake through the embers (it's an instrumental that harks back to the sounds on Pale Hands). Needless to say, for a duo Eyeless in Gaza shaped a huge sound and in certain key ways I think this LP (and "Photographs as Memories") are amongst the most unique from the time.
Whilst this is admittedly a consequence of their songwriting it's also due to their choice of instrumentation. Like "Photographs as Memories", the arrangements on "Drumming the Beating Heart" are spare, sparse and manage to spear the heart accurately. One key texture that you won't find on Photographs however is the strange, emotive tremolo string sound that darkens every corner of "Drumming the Beating Heart". This comes from a keyboard called a Gem Europa. I only know this because I emailed Pete Becker and asked him! The tones created by this portable, late '70s organ were probably intended for quite other uses than furnishing the efforts of a duo positioned at the poetic end of post-punk. In their hands it sounds a little like a cross between a Mellotron and the synth used by Joy Division on Closer's Decades. In other words, it's a mournful, minor key piece of machinery that seems custom built for songs like "Picture the Day" and "One by One". Indeed, I doubt whether the band would've written them without it.
The more I think about it, the closer I come to concluding that the first side of "Drumming the Beating Heart" has one on the strongest openings of any LP. Those first four songs are perfectly sequenced and there's very little between them in terms of raw quality. Underpinned by a percussive, pulled bass line "Transience Blues" brings a set of cold atmospherics that are sustained throughout side one. True, I do have a something of a taste for songs about rain and night, particularly when they're as passionate as this! Its stormy reflections provide the perfect soundtrack to lonely winter evenings. Then track two, "Ill-Wind Blows", introduces a slight note of calm. It's the stillness before the real storm arrives, maybe. And "One by One" sustains this mood. With its vaguely menacing rhythms and cascading, candlelit organ chords (the Gem Europa again) it creates probably the most haunting song ever written by the band.‟
Trevor Machine
