Davey
03-07-2016, 09:11 AM
Crazy name for a band, I know, and it looks like our old buddy unleasHell is the only one to mention them before around here, but ever since their great new record last year, Beauty Will Save the World, I've been pretty stuck on them. I bought the new one on vinyl, I got the vinyl reissue of their also amazing 1987 debut, The Gift of Tears, and also picked up the 2013 3-CD collection of 1987-1995, which covers their first three releases. All pretty amazing.
This new one is their their first full-length record in over 20 years, so enchanting, really deserves more attention. Similarities to Godspeed You Black Emperor, though probably more the other way around since they were here long before GYBE, interesting use of retrieved sounds and samples, some of it does echo back to Eno, and there's the Dead Can Dance reflections, especially in some of the middle eastern sound and percussion, the mostly wordless singing and chanting, and maybe the Swans from later in the 90s. Much of the music is propelled by either piano or strings, and you could almost describe it at times as sacred music, it sounds like it was recorded in a church, but still has that experimental edge, the background drones, the ambience, so soothing but also so interesting at the same time.
Anyway, if you get the chance, this is some pretty unique music to explore and get lost in. Highly recommended ...
The one below is pretty special, this is from the middle section of Beauty Will Save the World, it opens with R. S. Thomas reciting from his poem "The Bright Field", and the video is from the film by Andrei Tarkovsky ... beautifully integrated though with very powerful images, the poet’s voice giving way to the melancholy music, the boy in the film running in the fields around the house, the impending storm, I won't give any more away because it's very much worth watching and listening... looks like you have to watch it on youtube now, but very much worth the extra click ...
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLxRuRfH0J4
This new one is their their first full-length record in over 20 years, so enchanting, really deserves more attention. Similarities to Godspeed You Black Emperor, though probably more the other way around since they were here long before GYBE, interesting use of retrieved sounds and samples, some of it does echo back to Eno, and there's the Dead Can Dance reflections, especially in some of the middle eastern sound and percussion, the mostly wordless singing and chanting, and maybe the Swans from later in the 90s. Much of the music is propelled by either piano or strings, and you could almost describe it at times as sacred music, it sounds like it was recorded in a church, but still has that experimental edge, the background drones, the ambience, so soothing but also so interesting at the same time.
Anyway, if you get the chance, this is some pretty unique music to explore and get lost in. Highly recommended ...
The one below is pretty special, this is from the middle section of Beauty Will Save the World, it opens with R. S. Thomas reciting from his poem "The Bright Field", and the video is from the film by Andrei Tarkovsky ... beautifully integrated though with very powerful images, the poet’s voice giving way to the melancholy music, the boy in the film running in the fields around the house, the impending storm, I won't give any more away because it's very much worth watching and listening... looks like you have to watch it on youtube now, but very much worth the extra click ...
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLxRuRfH0J4