November 20, 2001 • Fancy
I ought to have learned my lesson about sideprojects by now. Sure, there are exceptions—the first Khoma album and some of A Silver Mt. Zion spring to mind—but with Hṛṣṭa I should have known better. Their debut is simply another ambient/post-rock that winds up being a bit dull and I don't see the point.
No, it isn't terrible. The post-rock sections have a nice folky twinge to them with the string section and other instruments, in an interesting contrast to how the strings made Godspeed sound orchestratic instead. I like that kind of flexibility.
But it isn't good either. None of the music ever does anything, and a lot of it sounds half-finished or like ideas that didn't take off, not even the tracks that break the seven-minute mark (with merely two exceptions). Nothing quite flows either, despite the ambient-rock-ambient-etc. sandwiching structure, further cementing my impression of the album as just a collection of unrelated snippets.
The sound itself is hit-or-miss. While the rockier sections can be pretty good, as I mentioned, plenty of the music leaves a lot to be desired. The ambient sections are particularly weak, with very simple textures that just sit around unprogressingly (and they don't even sound particularly good either, except for "Novi Beograd"'s intro which is actually really nice). The vocals are a mess. I guess in some deranged way they do fit, as they sound a bit off-the-rails and rough. Sometimes they sound like they fit, sometimes not ("Silver Planes" is the worst offender; vocals and ambient music rarely work well together).
Again, it isn't awful, and I can see it appealing to some bizarre demographic but that demographic does not include me. It's simply too dull and forgettable to even be worth it.
"It's simply too dull and forgettable to even be worth it."
ReplyDeleteyou tell them man!