Music Reviews
Memories Fade Under A Shallow Autumn Snow
by Language of Landscape
It’s the middle of March, and we’re finally experiencing a gorgeous spring day here in Lincoln. The skies are blue and full of sunshine, kids are in the park, and the temperature is in the mid-60s. In other words, about as perfect a day as you can imagine, and you’d think I’d be enjoying some appropriately shiny, jangly music full of cheery hooks and effervescent melodies. But if you’ve any knowledge of the music that Opus has tended to focus on over the last few years, then it shouldn’t really surprise you that I’m listening to an album entitled Memories Fade Under A Shallow Autumn Snow, and yes, it sounds like you think it would based on the title alone.
Working under the Language of Landscape moniker, Chris Tenz and Cory Zaradur bring together the austere ambience of Stars of the Lid with the similar austerity that can be heard in Arvo Pärt and Max Richter’s most sublime compositions. The result is music that slowly envelopes the listener with gentle guitar drones and sparse-yet-evocative piano arrangements, that slowly drifts down around you like, well, a shallow autumn snow.
Milhaven
by Milhaven
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, shall we? Yes, Milhaven are immediately comparable to Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky. But such is the curse of post-rock bands who employ slowburning climaxes and quiet/loud dynamics within their 7 to 8 minute long instrumental epics. That being said, I’m not inclined to write the band off as mere rip-offs, though the similarities to the aforementioned bands do make it somewhat difficult to differentiate Milhaven’s songs. (In other words, you might find yourself humming a guitar line from this album, only to realize that it was, in fact, “Greet Death”.)
But I can’t deny that once Milhaven gets going, with guitars that grow more chaotic with each iteration and rhythms that gain more momentum and urgency with each go-around, it’s hard not to just drop the cynicism and rock out alongside them—or at least, rock back and forth in your office chair while the band unleashes a sonic thunderstorm inside your headphones. Such is the power of good post-rock, I suppose, no matter how many bands might employ the same aesthetic. (Hey, it works for punk rock, right?)
Waves
by Keith Canisius
When listening to Rumskib’s self-titled debut several years back, I was struck by the duo’s exuberance, by the sense of joy that permeated their recording. The shoegazer genre has often been called “the scene that celebrates itself”, and here were a couple of shoegazers that were truly keen on celebrating.
That same feeling permeates Waves, the second solo album from Keith Canisius (one half of Rumskib). Indeed, Waves picks up right where Rumskib’s album left off: from the very get-go, Canisius dives headfirst into an ocean of shimmering, ethereal sounds, and does so with such enthusiasm that it’s hard to resist diving in right after him.
Kairos
by Caul
I’ve been a fan of Caul’s (aka Brett Smith) music for some time now, ever since I got The Sound of Faith back in the mid 1990s. Like Raison d’être, Smith’s brand of dark ambient music has always had a ritualistic, even sacred component to it—and not simply because he occasionally included angelic, choral samples in and amidst his cavernous drones and sonic drifts. Listening to those albums was like wandering through a ruined cathedral and catching glimpses and fragments of the holy ceremonies once performed there, ages ago; all in all, a very heady and affecting experience.
Sing On In Silhouettes
by Crepusculum
Crepusculum (aka Fred Baty) released his debut, The Sky Diaries EP, back in 2006. It was a pretty enough release, blending deft and intricate acoustic guitar compositions with electronics and field recordings. If nothing else, it was evidence that Baty was someone to keep an eye on. And with Sing On In Silhouettes, Baty’s second release on 12rec and his first full-length, he has delivered in spades.
Simply put, Sing On In Silhouettes is a much more confident and mature release than The Sky Diaries EP. Not only are the songs more involved and complex, but Baty’s arrangements and songwriting display a considerable grace and organic restraint. On songs like “A Fledgling Firework” and “Early Days”, it sounds less like Baty labored over them in some studio, but rather, let the songs develop and evolve naturally—always a hallmark of a talented musician (and it’s especially impressive considering Baty’s young age).
Wind’s Poem
by Mount Eerie
My second son was born just two weeks ago and therefore, thoughts of mortality and life’s fleetingness ought to be the furthest thing from my mind right now. However, I’ve been wrestling my way through Mount Eerie’s Wind’s Poem—and my subsequent review of it—for the last few months, and mortality and life’s fleetingness are essentially all that this album is about. So here I go again, launching myself headlong into the void after Phil Elverum.
Elverum has always been one of those artists that has existed on my periphery, and though I’ve been somewhat familiar with and intrigued by his work, I’ve never been all that pressed or convicted to delve too deeply into his considerable discography. But perhaps it was the evocative title, or the eerie (NPI) album artwork depicting snow-covered evergreens set against a murky winter sky. Or maybe it was the news/rumor that this was Elverum’s “black metal” album (not that I’m a black metal fan, mind you, but the combination of Elverum and black metal struck me as humorous, if not intriguing).
Whatever the case, I ended up getting Wind’s Poem... and I haven’t been the same since.
We Were Flying Kites
by Stripmall Architecture
I’ve been writing about music for more than a decade now, and I’ve seen a lot of artists come and go (honestly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned out that 80% of the artists I’ve reviewed over the years are now defunct). But there are some artists who continually stick around, who might go unheard from for a year or two, but then always get back onto my radar for whatever reason.
Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom are two such artists. I became aware of the Cosebooms via their first project, Anymore, which I discovered via a sampler that was offered on an old 4AD e-mail list that I once subscribed to. Then came Halou, their more electronica-minded outfit, which survived and transcended such terms as “trip-hop” and “downtempo” thanks to impeccable programming, plenty of 4AD-esque atmospherics, and Rebecca’s lovely vocals.
But Halou came to an end in 2008 while the group was touring with Bob Mould and the Cosebooms subsequently began Stripmall Architecture. It was originally an outlet for more experimental music than might’ve been associated with the Halou moniker, with live shows incorporating everything from “typical” electronics and guitars to typewriters and toy organs. But with the release of We Were Flying Kites, the Cosebooms have returned a little closer to the fold, so to speak—in many ways, We Were Flying Kites picks up right where Halou left off.
Resin
by Ashberry
We live in a society where art, and more specifically, music has increasingly become a commodity. The Internet, music blogs, file-sharing, MySpace—these have certainly made it easier to find, exchange, and promote music like never before. But sometimes, I can’t shake the feeling that by reducing music to ones and zeroes transmitted over the ether and stored in hard drives, we’ve made music even more disposable. We download songs, throw them on our iPods, give them a spin or two, and that’s it.
But there’s nothing physical to ground the music, to attach to it some measure of permanence or to provide even a small check against our increasing rate of consumption, and so it becomes all the more inconsequential: a commodity to be traded, examined, and tossed off with just a few mouse clicks.
The Length of the Rail
by The Balky Mule
Sam Jones, the man behind The Balky Mule, will write songs with whatever he can get his hands on. The initial inspiration for the songs on The Length of the Rail, his second under the name The Balky Mule, came from rescuing odd instruments from boot sales and recording snippets and vignettes, which he would later cobble together into a sort of mishmash singer/songwriter style.
Jones did time in the infamous Bristol shoegazer scene of the early ‘90s, contributing to bands such as Flying Saucer Attack, Crescent, and Movietone, and perhaps it was with those psychedelic noisemongers where he learned such interesting and eccentric arrangement techniques. He strings together bleepy analog synths, woozy organs, claptrap ramshackle percussion, and intermittent guitar strums to create a dense and fascinating tapestry.
In Sea
by Aarktica
For nearly ten years, Jon DeRosa has been producing music with the goal of capturing the sounds that exist inside his head. That may be the goal for all musicians, but in DeRosa’s case, there’s a bit more to it than that. You see, DeRosa is deaf in one ear and as a result, has had to live with aural distortions and hallucinations (not to mention the effects of painkillers)—all of which have served as inspiration for his music.
Originally, his attempts consisted of drone-oriented ambient recordings such as 2000’s No Solace In Sleep. Subsequent albums—e.g., 2003’s Pure Tone Audiometry, 2005’s Bleeding Light—saw DeRosa eschewing his earlier, pure ambient approach for a more structured, song-oriented sound.
Those later recordings contained memorable moments, but I’ve always found Aarktica’s music most affecting and involving when DeRosa is truly immersed in his dronework, however ominous and unsettling it might be. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I like In Sea so much, as Aarktica’s latest finds DeRosa returning to the noisier drones and atmospherics that first typified Aarktica.
Well… almost.