Hiro Kone — A Fossil Begins to Bray

The work of producer Hiro Kone (Nicky Mao) is reliably muscular and haptic. Over several releases Mao has shown talent and consistency. A Fossil Begins to Bray finds Mao transformed but intact. It builds on foundations set by its predecessors, but neither betrays nor leaves them in the dust. 

As suggested by its title, the album bursts from stolid and intermittent silences. Life erupts from nowhere. Wobbly rhythms, bright synth work and a menacing low end scream into being; relics rendered animate. 

The title track of A Fossil Begins to Bray forms like an organism emerging from primordial soup. From stuttering silence and calm, the track blossoms into a cacophonous roar. It builds to an abrupt cut, a story suddenly swiped from the table. In a few minutes, Mao manages a wordless evocation of a species’ span on the planet. 

‘Akoluthic Phase’ has a similar structure. What begins akin to Eduard Artemyev’s mysterious work for Tarkovsky heaves out of the sea and sprouts a propulsive, powerline-twang of a bassline. Its pensive mode accelerates into danger and fierce action.

It’s impressive how often Mao repeats this trick in different ways. A standout is ‘Shatter the Gangue of Piety’, a lurching epic peppered with inhuman signs and industrial clanging. It’s the most monstrous track here: like Depeche Mode but fracked, blasted into deconstruction and drained of black blood. 

Mao’s M.O. appears to be a rejection of modernity and accelerationism; an ode to quiet and to hesitance. It’s not some Luddite manifesto — more a work which tenders reflection on the structures which support us. The weight of history held in our future.

The most overt example of this is ‘Submerged Dragons’, a transitory minimalist track which lapses into frequent silence. It is filled with tension; a penny awaiting the drop. What a friend of mine would call ‘silence so loud you want to turn it up’. This track and its peers are something to ring the ears with more than once. 

Hiro Kone’s A Fossil Begins to Bray is available for stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

People Club — Kil Scott

People Club's Kil Scott is a sharp, 15-minute injection of psychedelic pop. Like some whispy and autumnal mutation of The Police, it's defined by syncopated grooves so laid-back that at points they border on muzak. Given the industry's near-constant glut of lo-fi indie rockers, you might take this as a criticism. But the strength of Kil Scott is in this delicacy.

No idea, musical or otherwise, is forced. Lyrics' dry wit and sincerity are given breathing space, and melodic ideas are fully conceived and explored. This work is fascinatingly self-tempering; it clips its own wings on the verge of fledging. But it's not failure to launch, or toothlessness — it's balance, nuance, and control.

Kil Scott touches on imbalances of power, both social and inter-personal. Its four songs discuss, among more topics, sexism, homophobia, and destructive relationships. All the while, People Club keep a deft handle on everything, balancing the personal with the political. Subjects are filtered through a stark, emotive and confessional voice. But Kil Scott never loses perspective; it's pointed, but never didactic.

Its first and last tracks serve to illustrate this balance. 'Perfume', the opener, explores the paranoia, venom and defeat of a dying relationship. It's internalised and brooding. 'Who I Call My Baby', though, is an outward projection. It defies an undefined source of homophobia which would meddle in a couple's love. What's impressive is how People Club approach these two pieces from the same place — one of tenderness and compassion. By the time Kil Scott finishes, you'll wonder how they packed so much in.

Kil Scott will be available to purchase and stream on the 15th of November. Stream single ‘Perfume’ here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Inside — Sea Change

Following 2015's Breakage, Norwegian artist Sea Change (aka Ellen Sunde) presents Inside. Inside is a collection of seven tracks which focus on the transformative and physical effect of music. An upbeat answer to SØS Gunver Ryberg's Entangled, Inside is a luminous and ecstatic listen. It permits the body to medicate the mind.

Sunde has described her recording process as 'almost anti-intellectual'. This is embodied in her album's sensuality; it's in the lyrics, which reference skin, bones, muscle and fur. It's in the thudding sub-bass which grounds Sunde's breathy delivery. Inside is so thick with physicality you can almost snatch it from the air.

Songwriting is robust and unpredictable. Second track 'Stepping Out' makes an abrupt and joyful upshift for its final third. It's a case of medium as message, as the song's lyrics describe a werewolf-like transformation. The wolf embodies, as it always has, a psychosexual hunger — in this case, the hunger for movement and self-expression. The song's form follows, stirs this same urge; an urge for dance, freedom and physical connection.

Later in the release, 'Scratch That Itch' repeats the trick, even making a similar lyrical reference to 'shape-shifting'. But it's a beast wholly of its own, relentless and bolstered by swampy booms of sub-bass. Thanks to the strength of co-producer Andrew Murray's mixing, you might mistake them for your own heartbeat.

And even the slow jams on Inside are irresistible. 'What Makes' summons the spirit of 80s electropop ballads, the dearly departed Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, but doesn't catch Stranger Things syndrome and slip into parody. It's a lush, beautiful song; a composition which seems to skip stonelike across a half-frozen lake.

Penultimate track 'The Bed' builds to a Nils Frahm-esque crescendo. But it is delivered with more colour and canniness than any of Frahm's work. It has a wonderful analogue feeling. Ramping synths muster the sublimity of Alice Coltrane's devotional work. A panning, train-like chitter is like something from an early acousmatic noodler's playbook.

'The Bed' seamlessly transitions into 'Flown', one final affirmation of the physical self. Its structure and content may, by this point, seem familiar to listeners. It's true: many songs on Inside cover superficially similar ground. But rather than nullify each other, they cumulate and strengthen a collective thesis. Inside comprehensively explores our multi-faceted interior worlds, from different angles and under different lights. And all the while, it tempts all that potential energy we hoard within to explode to the surface. With this engaging release, Sunde tends to a force which animates us and turns us from bags of skin to something greater.

Inside, released on Nov. 15th, will be available here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

1st single from Sea Change's upcoming record . . . Produced by Baya and Ellen A. W. Sunde Mixed by Andrew Murray Baardsen Mastered by Zino Mikorey Artwork by Ernst van Hoek

Swans — Leaving Meaning

Since their 1983 debut, Filth, Swans have reinvented themselves more than perhaps any other band. Frontman Michael Gira has rallied multiple line-ups through multiple decades. The band has explored punishing no-wave, gothic country, and transcendent post-rock. But what has always remained consistent are Swans' themes of violence, power, lust and religion.

Leaving Meaning retains these themes, but scales back the bombast that post-reunion Swans have come to embody. Don't get it twisted: the album still, at points, sounds gargantuan. 'Sunfucker' is a vast and brutal track which could go toe-to-toe with any of the band's most extreme. But it's blessed with the delicacy of Gira's side-project, The Angels of Light.

Leaving Meaning is a more reflective and personal album than its immediate predecessors, too. Gira focuses on transitioning between life and death, rising to the face of God in his old age. 'Amnesia', a classic Swans track, has been re-recorded to stunning effect. Lyrics are, for the first time in decades, specific and scrutable — but they are being delivered by an older and wiser voice. The album is soaked in the past, but squinting at an uncertain future.

Likely to lose Swans some of their post-reunion fans, this album may end up a victim of its own subtlety. It imposes very little, with a greatly reduced focus on crescendos, riffs and walls of noise. But far from a deliberate rejection of these facets, Leaving Meaning is another evolution from a band whose history is defined by them. And it can proudly cap one of the most colourful contemporary discographies in the Western canon.

Leaving Meaning is available to purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Swans new album, leaving meaning., will be released worldwide October 25th, 2019 on Young God Records/Mute. Formats include 2X LP, 2CD, as well as download and stream. "It's Coming It's Real" features choral vocals by Anna and Maria von Hausswolff. Pre-order signed copies through Young God Records - http://bit.ly/2lFLeTq Everywhere else - http://smarturl.it/SWANS-LM Swans will tour in 2020.

Amulets — Between Distant and Remote

Between Distant and Remote, the new LP from Amulets, descends like a hazy half-thought. A tonal comparison can be drawn between this LP and the iconic opening of Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Its melodies slope gently from fog like mountainsides, their substructures smeared underneath. In its woozy timbre and construction, it recalls Popol Vuh's beautiful soundtrack work. Between Distant and Remote stumbles from the sump of the past like Aguirre's caravan, heaving along packs of analogue mugginess.

There is some of the DNA of Fennesz in here, too; a sense of hope, of bright light. But as in Fennesz's Endless Summer, that hope carries a frightening twinge. Like pulling up a deck chair on a beautiful beach to watch the sun self-combust.

By coincidence, beaches crop up in the title of this LP's third track: 'Where the Land Meets the Sea'. Both delicate and powerful, this track functions like the meeting of elements that is its subject. Noise crashes in vast, but gentle waves, like when time eats a cliff. 'Nothing in the world is soft and weak as water. But when attacking the hard and strong, nothing can conquer so easily.'

No doubt one thing is clear: work this impressionistic is hard to explain. Hard, that is, without resorting to hackneyed metaphor, lazy comparison, or purple prose. All that can be offered is a sense of the album's tone and the emotions it conjures. In this case, the tone is one of immense and beautiful nostalgia. Between Distant and Remote is an elating release, too. It induces both longing and a gratitude for life; an awareness of how tremulous a thing we hold in ourselves, and hope for what's to come.

Between Distant and Remote, released on 25th of October, will be available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe