Red Sparowes - Aphorisms

Red Sparowes has always come off as one of the more literate post rock bands. While their record concepts have ached of forced thoughtfulness the music the group produces has never felt the least bit cluttered. Most post rock groups simply attempt to bend the minor scale as far as it will go while Red Sparowes take a much more tonal approach to their sound. At times this works brilliantly creating beautiful soundscapes with unanticipated twists. Other times the band is left sounding extremely unmoving; example being their first LP which while interesting suffered due to its seemingly useless noise interludes. Luckily "Aphroisms" suffers none of the group’s flaws from their debut instead mimicking the more developed side of their second LP. As post rock bands have become a dime a dozen it is always great to hear a band be as good as Red Sparowes at their own little niche of the genre. Important to Red Sparowes is the sophistication of their songs not the textural beauty and this is why they come off as a more intelligent version of groups like Explosions in the Sky and Russian Circles.

red sparowes' 'aphorisms'

"Aphorisms" is an important record for Red Sparowes because of the loss of previous guitarist Josh Graham. Graham is known for his textural tone as well as his involvement in Neurosis and Battle of Mice. In my opinion he is one of the more successful post metal guitarists due to his ability to craft dynamically heavy yet melodic displays. This helped Red Sparowes in the past as the metal edge was beefed up in part because of Graham. On "Aphorisms" we can feel the change of sound yet it doesn't come off as a bad one. Red Sparowes have just grown a little lighter as well as a little more rhythm based. This change may have nothing to do with the departure of Graham but whatever the reason "Aphorisms" is a great EP showcasing Red Sparowes evolving sound. Drummer David Clifford provides a dynamically interesting performance that helps blend the soft and loud changes effortlessly. Guitarists Bryant Meyer and Andy Arahood create gorgeous melodies that echo traces of math rock complexities. “Error Has Turned Animals to Men, and to Each the Fold Repeats” is a perfect example with its hallowing guitar laden conclusion being both cathartic and compositionally developed. In all honesty this EP probably represents the group at their most efficient. The band has honed in the lengths of their songs and put a more prominent effort in being a little more emotionally and it pays off in heaps.

red sparowes performing 'a message of avarice rained down upon us and carried us away into false dreams of endless riches'

Fans of Red Sparowes that have yet to hear this record may be feeling a little anxious do to how radical I've kind of implied it sounds. To be honest this simply isn't as vastly different from their other material as I imply. The lengthy song titles are here with the opener being label as "We Left the Apes to Rot, But Find the Fang Grows Within" and the basic structure of the songs are the same as before. Said opener is a trip between a mathy introduction that forms its way into one of the band's most gorgeous sections through a transition of white noise. "Aphorisms" comes off as a record where the band is using the same pieces as always just sort of mixing up how those pieces are arranged. This philosophy reveals itself to be both the records strength and flaw. In terms of the Red Sparowes discography "Aphorisms" should probably be labeled as the most cohesive piece, but in terms of the entire genre of post rock the group is simply not doing anything original here. The band is simply a very good example of modern post rock and if you are approaching the record with anything but that in mind be prepared for a disappointment.


Red Sparowes - Aphorisms (2008)

Asva - What You Don't Know is Frontier

asva

for those who have not heard yet, Kayo Dot's latest record 'Blue Lambency Downward' has leaked and is also available streaming from bluelambencydownward.com. Kayo Dot is probably my favorite band, if not them Off Minor and they really have progressed their sound into something familiar yet different with their new record. oddly enough the metal side of their sound has been stripped which may seem weird with their recent signing to Hydrahead Records. although there is a change Kayo Dot's new record is soon to be out and you can expect a more developed review from me on rateyourmusic.com in the future.

kayo dot's 'blue lambency downward'

in keeping themes, the reason i was originally interested in the album i've uploaded is because of Kayo Dot's head Toby Driver's supposed vocal appearance. well, almost two years after its initial announcement it appears although Toby's contribution has been removed the group known as Asva has created a marvelously melancholic experience. drone and doom metal alumni are over this album with it featuring members of Burning Witch, Earth, Sunn 0))), as well as contributors who were involved with Mr. Bungle. but, i really can't talk about this album as well as lefthandpass's Stewart Voegtlin does.

asva's stuart dahlquist

"As luck would have it, I’ve never met Stuart Dahlquist. In late spring of 2005, I patched an awkward bit of writing together hailing the operatic prog of Asva’s Futurists Against the Ocean. I e-mailed him the review and from then on, Stuart and I corresponded willy-nilly, mostly about books, ideas, places; his words always alarmingly honest and innocently unaware. A month after my Futurists review ran, Stuart’s brother, Michael, was killed. I woke up one morning, had coffee and checked some websites. There on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic page was the news. The one year anniversary of Michael’s death came around and Stuart wrestled with how he was going to spend that time. He was living in Long Beach, getting along well enough and doing his best to keep the demons at bay. He told me he was going to stay at a mountain cabin and think about Michael. When he came back down that mountain, he said he’d gotten deep down into a bottle of Wild Turkey, listened a lot to Michael’s band, Silkworm, and bawled his eyes out. He told me he missed Michael. He still tells me that a lot. I don’t blame him. Sometime after that I got a package in the mail; it was the What You Don’t Know Is Frontier demo. I put the disc on immediately. Given what I knew, the music was almost unbearably forlorn, a frigid gust of life rumbling the shelves in my living room. Outside the sun was bearing down – the first flex of a muscular summer heat. I have never heard anything like WYDKIF. It reminds me of the first time I heard Mozart’s Requiem, or Gould’s Goldberg Variations. The music has a punishing sort of beauty, an inflicted aesthetics that hands the hearer no choice. I wanted to share it; I pitched articles to some big glossies and never heard back. Undeterred, I tried to cook up a summit without border constraints. No e-mail, no phones. Stuart and I talked about getting together for a big, drunken interview: whisky and words, wishes and wants. I proposed that we do it down South. And then he told me about the family ranch in Livingston, Montana. Well – me being a fly-fisherman – we had our interview location. He told me little to nothing about the ranch proper. He did say that his grandfather’s marker was up there, high in the mountains. He told me what the marker said: That one day we might ride together in a different place. His Sons and Grandsons. And he told me that Michael’s marker will one day rest there as well. The Greek playwright Aeschylus said that there’s no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. That quotation, at least for me, encapsulates WYDKIF. But I’m just a writer. I’m listening to the music and listening to what Stuart says about the music, and I’m trying to make a judgment. Sometimes, I can be right. Sometimes, I just cheat – and ask. “Everything I did [after Michael’s death] – and to a large extent still do – is directly affected by the sense of such an absolute loss,” Stuart wrote in an e-mail just before the New Year. “I wasn't sitting there writing music thinking of Michael, but his influence was inescapable.” The phrase, What You Don’t Know is Frontier, came from “Bring Me a Monkey,” a poem Michael wrote. The phrase reluctantly governs the music in the only way it can, acting simultaneously as some sort of wildly incongruous masthead and also as one’s only recourse against the unknown. Outside the slim boundaries of knowledge is – as always – the wilderness. Stuart confessed that the creative process wasn’t so much an emersion as it was avoidance; he poured as much of his emotion into that vessel as he could. One more stray drop would’ve split the hull. “The finished result was what I really wanted, needed actually, to hit an emotional chord,” he wrote. “WYDKIF – when taken as a whole – needed to have real impact to remind me: ‘this is where you were, Stuart, embrace it again.’ I think it succeeds in doing that.” It does. The music is a fabric, a structure that has always been here. Evocation is forever. Presence is tactile. Foundation rolls out to the horizon, what’s grown from its ground is as artificial as it is organic. Guitar and bass weep. Skins and brass are intermittent flares – hot crackling bursts of white and red in the midst of a bottomless black. Melodies ghost through ruin and the mind holds them fast and doesn’t let go. Analogues are plentiful. I thought of Grieg or Berlioz at their greatest bombast. I thought of peasant music; poor, tired and toothless folk gumming nursery rhymes. I thought of Morricone and Orff, Tampa Red, Charley Patton – even Wagner. As soon as I heard the final mix I e-mailed Stuart. “The feeling of vastness is unmatched,” I wrote. “Tons of imagery. It's hard to turn off the mind with these sounds. I just keep seeing the ocean. Lots of water. Lots of rock. Sky. Barren plains. Blood and filth and death. The melodies are touching; the bombast is cathartic. I'm happy as shit for you, bro. You've done it...” He really has. For three straight months, I listened to WYDKIF every day on the way to work. From the highway to the open fields and worn rural roads, my broken speakers rattled and vibrated, the bass thudded and hummed and roared through their scratched black grates. When the pipe organ comes in at the end, the rattling goes away. The organ has such presence, such heft, but it sounds like lightness, like the quality of having little to no physical weight. Stuart had originally performed the piece on a Hammond, but said the pipe organ was [Engineer] Randall [Dunn’s] suggestion; that he “wanted it to sound like air was moving, like the wind was coming back into your sails.” It does. It’s rejuvenating. It’s settling. It makes sense: “WYDKIF is about rebirth,” Stuart wrote, “about that light at the end of the tunnel. Amen.” It’s high past time for that interview, and I hear Livingston trout are just killing beadheads right about now." -lefthandpath.com

asva's 'what you don't know is frontier'

you should all really purchase this album, i know i can't wait to get my copy. sadly, it is not actually out until june.

Kayo Dot - 'Blue Lambency Downward' (2008)
Asva - 'What You Don't Know is Frontier' (2008)

Top Ten of 2007: Tusk - The Resisting Dreamer

Julie Christmas's side project Battle of Mice released one of my favorite records last year in the form of 'A Day of Nights'. blending the harsh, dissonant metal of bands like Isis and Neurosis with a one of a kind female vocal performance, it was a side of metal that i had really never heard before. basically most post-metal is distinctly monotone in the vocals. Isis' Aaron Turner may sound tortured, but he is basically like a guitar without any effects; he can be distorted or clean. Julie Christmas essentially put that idea to rest and let out one of the most terrifyingly, volatile vocal performances ever. imagine the squeaky voices of Bjork and Joanna Newsom thrown through the vocal linguistics of Diamanda Galas. Christmas lets you feel her pain on 'A Day of Nights' through her unabashed, charismatic, story telling and cries for plea. the guitar playing behind her on 'A Day of Nights' is unsurpassed in its simplicity. the rhythm section, a slow plodding monster that beautiful accents, Christmas' variety of howls. anyways, the point is nothing ever really sounds like 'A Day of Nights' and i wasn't expecting anything else to. it was one of a kind its pure emotion involved with a very metal performance. of course, this was all before i had heard Tusk's 'The Resisting Dreamer'.

battle of mice's 'a day of nights'

'The Resisting Dreamer' is a collaboration between former Breather Resist vocalist Evan Patterson and Kayo Dot front man Toby Driver with the back up of 3/4ths of Pelican playing behind them. where A Battle of Mice was very devoted in making a certain kind of atmosphere with 'A Day of Nights', Tusk seems holy been on forming a trinity between The Jesus Lizard, Pelican and Kayo Dot. i only say Kayo Dot, because of Toby's tortured vocals on track 2 which are interestingly enough very similar to Christmas' on 'A Day of Nights'. Tusk is totally noisy and epic all over 'The Resisting Dreamer' and the even manage to pull off a sixteen minute noise track without making it seem boring. these two bands are obviously pushing for a more interesting take on the long overdone post-metal. Battle of Mice with their strangely anthematic atmospheric metal, and Tusk with their forways into making post-metal less sterile and over produced and turning it into something raw, almost reverting back to a simpler more 'hardcore' time.

tusk's 'the resisting dreamer'

both of these records have had tremendous replays in my collection. excellent with any form of psycho-active and just all around heavy, stoned reflections on various perspectives of life. they both share a common line in their mix of very serious music with almost childish perspectives in terms of their vocals. Tusk is clearly one of the best records of the year with it's obtuse take on post-metal and if you have any interest in the versatility of metal, i suggest you take a look at both of these albums.

tusk's 'the resisting dream' (2007)
battle of mice's 'a day of nights' (2006)