Holding onto Hope – Of the Sea

2009 • self-released

Of the Sea is another one of those albums that just magically showed up in my library (I probably ultimately got it from a blog somewhere), but it was a pleasant surprise to find in light of my recent emo binge. It's not the greatest album like it that I've ever heard, but it's up there somewhere.

Holding onto Hope is one of the few emo-influenced post-hardcore bands that doesn't completely suck—in fact, they're quite good. Their music has a blatant post-rock and ambient edge to it that gives it a bit more depth and pleasantness than their contemporaries. They're kind of like a softer and lighter Touché Amoré (the vocalists sound almost the same, as well). It's the perfect balance of melodicism and aggressiveness for my taste—you get both heavy, crunchy breakdown riffs and more intricate lines to balance them out.

But while it has those nice guitar parts and the songs are generally well-written, the album on the whole does drag a bit about halfway through. There are a few "pure" post-rock/chamber music tracks to pad things out, but I still feel like the album is a bit lacking when it comes to diversity. The lyrics and vocals, in particular, are kind of silly and get a bit tiresome. They fit the music, though, so maybe that's just me.

Fortunately, the music is good enough to recommend the album on alone. It's nothing really groundbreaking or revolutionary but it's definitely a pleasing listen when it's on.

6

Lento – Anxiety Despair Languish

October 26, 2012 • Denovali Records

Lento's debut Earthen was one of those albums that helped define my early music tastes—a healthy if typical combination of sludge and post-rock that I would use as a benchmark for many similar albums to come. As time has passed Lento has moved on from that and it's tough to say if it's something they should have done, and my feelings about Anxiety Despair Languish are still a bit mixed.

Lento's style is still in the same ballpark as it's always been, admittedly, but the band has noticeably changed how it's presented and composed. Rather than slow-burning doomy tracks, things move at a brisker pace with some prominent melodies and riffs that fly by. All the songs are quite short—only one goes over four minutes—which took me by surprise at first.

But to be honest I'm not that pleased on the whole with the way Lento's sound has changed. Rather than thought-out songs, we get more of bite-sized bits of music, each holding only a few ideas in them. To me it all sounds very disorganized—the different sections often don't lead into each other well and are almost disorienting in how often things change up. The track "Death Must Be the Place" is a good example: chunky, angular riffs open the track, but lead into some weird half-measure blastbeat sections (why are those even there?), then suddenly some lonely acoustic guitar, then to a straightforward groove section. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

Of course the whole album isn't quite as bad as that one; the title track turned out to be one of my favorites: it has a great heavy and pounding mood to it, while still being catchy and memorable. "A Necessary Leap" manages to take the multi-section thing and do a good job at it, but unfortunately it's a bit of an exception.

I don't want to seem too negative—after all, this album is pretty decent—so I should mention that, as always, Lento has plenty of great ideas. The vast majority of short sections are fine—at any given point during the album I'm probably enjoying what I'm hearing. It's just that the overall execution really needs some work. There's a reason atmospheric sludge and doom have long songs—it's simply best that way! Still, it's an interesting experience, if nothing else; perhaps Lento is trying to steer the genre in a new direction, which is admirable (after all, it could use one).

5

Taake – Nattestid ser porten vid...

January 1, 1999 • Wounded Love Records

I'll probably always be a fan of the pure second-wave black metal style—unrelenting tremolo and blastbeats, walls of dissonant sound, the utterly cold atmosphere that characterized Norway in the mid-'90s. But that isn't to say that the formula couldn't be improved upon—and Taake has improved on just about every aspect of it with Nattestid ser porten vid....

It all comes down to the riffs, really—something about the way Taake handles their songwriting that makes this album (and its successors) stand out. While there is plenty of simple Darkthrone-esque blasting, the guitars are almost always playing some very melodic riffs, evoking a certain folky aesthetic that is balanced perfectly with the aggression of typical black metal. Normally I think of folk-influenced riffs as being pretty cheesy but there are a few bands I know of who can pull them off well, and Taake is definitely one of them. Normally one doesn't think of this era of black metal as being particularly catchy, either (at least, I don't), but just about every track here makes me yearn to air-drum along. Take the beginning of the final track—the little drum solo leading into the thrashy, almost punk, opening riff is so incredibly satisfying.

I feel like I should mention (though it seems silly to) that the production on this album does help quite a bit—rather than the muddy, raw sound prevalent in the early '90s and certain modern bands, Nattestid sounds quite clean and professional, if still a bit thin (to be expected, really). You can even hear the bass!

So it's just about everything good about '90s black metal, rolled up into one album. Somehow—even today, nearly twelve years after its release—it still feels very fresh. Highly recommended.

8

Jason Lescalleet – Songs About Nothing

June 2012 • Erstwhile Records

It isn't often one hears about highly-anticipated releases in more avant-garde genres (even if it's Merzbow or something) but I decided to look into Jason Lescalleet after hearing a bit of hype for Songs About Nothing. Even after a few listens of this album, I'm still a bit perplexed—it's mostly enjoyable, but it's hard to say why.

The album's first disc ia a challenging one for me and I'm really not sure how to approach it. While I'm almost always one to fully dive into noise and sound collage sorts of albums, this one is very difficult to penetrate. Each individual track is so different in sound that it's hard to get a grip on what I'm listening to. On the first disc, the short tracks jump around crazily—pure noise, EAI, crackly glitch, drone, dark ambient, and of course the Big Black samples dance in and out of the picture. On one hand, the pieces themselves are pretty neat and Lescalleet crafts a lot of pleasing textures; on the other hand, I feel like each one of these pieces (the good ones, anyway) really deserve to be more fleshed-out. What we get are thirteen bite-sized bits of musique concrète but most of the album deserves better than that.

However the more quiet and introspective tracks (mainly "Escargot" through "Friday Night in a Catholic Home") really grabbed me—the softer ambience, subtle background sounds, warm drones: that was the point where I really started to get into the album. It's simply a shame that, again, they were so short.

The second disc, a forty-three minute long soundscape, is (to me) a bit more typical of the minimal noise / drone I usually listen to—eerie drones, pulsing ominous synths, deep dark bass frequencies, and some interesting processed sampling. It slowly evolves into some abstract microsound / ambient / field recordings akin to the tracks I mentioned on the first disc; it's pleasing stuff (though there's not much to say about it).

I think Lescalleet handles the long-form album much better, as "The Future Belongs to No One" is much easier for me to get into and appreciate, one of those pieces that it's too easy to get lost in. It doesn't pound the listener with harsh changes or out-of-place samples (except for the last few minutes—but let's just pretend like that part never happened).

Again, I'm still not really sure what to take from Songs About Nothing—is it ahead of its time, that we're seeing this sort of avant-garde music made into a more accessible and listener-friendly format? Or is it just a self-indulgent exercise in sound composition? Or neither? I don't know. Taken at face value, as a simple album on its own, it's okay. It has its highs and lows, like any other release, and for me that's all it is.

6

Echospace – Silent World

Yes, I'm back! I got pretty lazy last week.

June 17, 2012 • echospace [detroit]

For me it started with Liumin, an introduction to a style I'd barely known and that was the opposite of what I thought of techno as—hazy, dense, droning music, the sort of thing that was already right up my alley and I had been too presupposing to actually hear it. Liumin—and Silent World, which is what this review is supposed to be about—are more contemplative music, the kind of stuff I love, the kind that lets you sit and listen and think—maybe not about anything in particular, but think anyway; maybe imagine the urban scenes evoked by the slow crackling rain on the sidewalk or the lights diffused through heavy fog, or about what you're missing by sitting inside with the lights on and pretending to care about something you don't want to do.

Anyway, if you've heard Liumin, there aren't any surprises on Silent World, as the sound is pretty consistent: deep, subterranean techno beats combined with an incredibly thick blanket of ambience and droning textures, working together in perfect sync to create an atmosphere that's both isolating and a bit claustrophobic. The music does seem awfully repetitive on the surface (even moreso for techno amateurs like me) but there's tons of subtlety going on that might be hard to pick up on—stretched out samples, micro-changes in the way the synths and effects are handled, and one of my favorite bits: the drowning mariachi band in "BCN Dub" (also making a reappearance from Liumin). It's all too easy to get lost in the mix and the swirling drones and thudding beat and simply not think about anything else for a while. (Two and a half hours, to be precise.)

Speaking of the runtime, that is one thing about Silent World that can be a bit intimidating—really, three hours of the same repetitive old techno beat? especially the monster seventy-minute title track? Fortunately it's not as repetitive as it may seem; each track has its own traits that set it apart from the rest, like "Ghost Theory"'s skittery old-school sound or "Orbiting" and "Theme from Silent World" both being almost pure ambient. True, if you skip around each track you won't miss much, but each one still has something interesting to offer.

I still have yet to find any evidence that a film called Silent World with this as it soundtrack actually exists, but regardless this album stands up excellently on its own (as I expected). Unfortunately, for me it won't ever stand up to its predecessor—as I heard Liumin first, Silent World doesn't have quite the same magic and excitement, but they're two very similar albums and are equally enjoyable.

7