Sunday, December 14, 2008

Volcano the Bear: Amidst the Noise and Twigs

A stained patchwork quilt of the last 30 years of experimental music — hints of Popol Vuh’s reverent choral drones, the busted-up earnestness of the ’80s Kiwi underground, the spastic rhythms and eclectic instrumentation of This Heat (perhaps their closest neighbours), the unhinged playfulness of Faust, and the knowing eccentricities of Robert Wyatt — Amidst the Noise and Twigs nevertheless wanders enough in its own orbit to be its own thing entirely, a slippery conveyer belt of left-field instrumentation, sudden, skittering percussion, elliptical, sometimes damaged vocals, and flutters of post-processing trickery, a kind of throwing shit against the wall and not caring what sticks.

VTB seem to consciously avoid the kind of hypnotism trafficked in by bands frequently described as of the same ilk — Jackie-o-Motherfucker, Vibracathedral Orchestra — settling upon grooves in short spurts before abandoning them just as suddenly, preferring to move onto new ideas, or deconstruct the old ones, for their momentum.

For the celebrated British four-piece, now twelve-years young and piling up a heady discography, setting out with such a consciously wide, undefined scope means moments of unabashed prettiness (the almost saccharine vocal coda to ‘Before We Came to This Religion’) are as much flotsam as artless noise (the ceaseless overdriven yelling of ‘One Hundred Years of Infamy’), all of it to be run through, played with, discarded anyhow. Why use a real piano when a sour one will do? By the last track, the relatively grounded ‘The Three Twins’, VTB band their damaged ivories with enough baby’s crying, Wyatt-by-way-of-This Heat vocals, scrapes of violin and double bass, to allow the piano to become the song’s melodic heart, its tunelessness less a distraction than a strength, altering the listener’s frame of reference to encourage, as the whole record’s whole forty-five minutes does, a different way of hearing melody, of anticipating tension, release, and resolution.

Originally published here.

Recently

• • Four Records From The (Almost) Canon
  • Four remarkable, little-heard records from two depressed Kiwis, a deep listening scholar, some truly radical post-punkers and a couple of Arizona desert rats. There's more.
• • Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light
  • A review of Antony and the Johnson's 2009 lp The Crying Light, published in The Big Issue. There's more.
• • Sir Richard Bishop
  • Bishop still moves through styles and obsessions at a rate faster than you can recognize them, as likely to break out into back-porch swing as a gypsy freakout. But for those for whom the Girls were always a bit too far out in the ether, Bishop's new record -- as open-eyed and accessible as anything he's ever done -- is a great entry point to the Girls' fourth dimension. There's more.
• • Deerhoof
  • Listening to Deerhoof, San Francisco's wonderfully manic noise-pop trio, you often get the feeling you're playing with a child's toy, one that is all sweetness and smiles, and then, all of a sudden, sprouts a new head. There's more.
• • Popol Vuh: Mika Vainio / Haswell & Hecker Remixes 12"
  • Popol Vuh's cavernous, immense drone is foreboding, as you would expect, but, pieced together from loops of a choir, it is also possessed of an otherworldly, almost transcendent quality, one that elevates the film into greatness before the conquistadors even reach the river. If there has been a better contribution to a film soundtrack since, or a better collaboration between a filmmaker and musician at the peaks of their respective careers, I haven't heard it. There's more.
• • Volcano the Bear: Amidst the Noise and Twigs
  • For the celebrated British four-piece, now twelve-years young and piling up a heady discography, setting out with such a consciously wide, undefined scope means moments of unabashed prettiness (the almost saccharine vocal coda to 'Before We Came to This Religion') are as much flotsam as artless noise (the ceaseless overdriven yelling of 'One Hundred Years of Infamy'), all of it to be run through, played with, discarded anyhow. There's more.