Культуры и искусствы
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Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in
Культур-Мультур's LiveJournal:
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019 | 2:54 pm [onkel_mitch]
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REVIEW: Ved Buens Ende - Written in Waters (1995, Misanthropy)
In the mid to late 90s there was a popular infliction in Norway of calling anything that somehow doesn't fit in the mold of a specific genre, an avantgarde. Such a classification has some merits, however the Norwegians within a certain scene got to use the term avantgarde extremely liberally. The singer cannot hit a note? That's avantgarde. The drummer cannot keep time? That's avantgarde. The band knows nothing about song structure and composition? That's avantgarde.
Those who followed the development of the Scandinavian black metal in the 90s readily remembers many musical miscarriages stemming from throwing a wrench at the known notions of music, or whatever might be construed as such by those involved.
The album in question released in 1995 (before anything of this sad nature in my memory) perhaps receives the credit for starting the trend. Those versed in the black metal lore may recall that throughout the history of the genre, a (pseudo)intellectualism was one of the key ingredients of the ideology and pose. At some point somebody decided to crank the knob of the latter to the far right, make a bunch of references to the cultural legacy of grown-ups and see if the audience swallows what comes out of it. Judging from the rating in Metal Archives, the trick worked.
On "Written in Waters", the only full-length album of thankfully short- lived project, members of Manes and Dodheimsgard do exactly that. Technically speaking, this is rooted in black metal with everything one expects to see in it by 1995. Avantgarde leanings or not, this was a wise move as the BM scene in that year was hot. The BM base is liberally strewn with snippets of non-black-metal music, primarily leftovers from 70s, mostly post-Crimson prog rock. Occasionally, jazz parts kick in. And all of this lavishly sprinkled with vocal exercises courtesy of Carl-Michael Eide, which is the worst part of the deal. I've seen many lousy attempts at vocalization in my time, and must admit that this is a prize-winning one. The definition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "is there a cat or something stuck in a chimney" describes the aural experience pretty accurately. Let's face it: Carl-Michael plainly cannot sing, in any possible definition of the term. Varg can, Vidar can, Calt-Michael cannot. Based on this outing I'd place him at the second rank of bad singers, second only to Keiji Haino, and that's a big achievement of sorts.
While awful singing being the worst offense committed by the crew it is certainly not the only one. The music is devoid of any dynamics or inner logic whatsoever. Both metal and non-metal parts follow one another for no apparent reason. Each part taken separately is executed and recorded competently, but are mostly un-engaging and tedious on their own, and completely lose their appeal and purpose when thrown n a seemingly random sequence. Chaotic songwrighting can be executed tastefully and to a great deal of dramatic effect, however this is certainly not the case. By the time the album reaches its half it becomes damn annoying. For those who has patience of sitting though an almost an hour long ordeal there is a short reward of a free jazz piece towards the end of the "Remembrance of Things Past". Apart from that none of the compositional components are particularly worth attention as to that date there were lots of better examples in any field touched by this record. The only question worth pondering is how this pile of crap ended up being praised as an avantgarde masterpiece.
You will do yourself a favor by avoiding this album. Those brave souls who have an hour of their life to waste can form their own opinion here.
Current Music: Arcturus - Arcturian
| Wednesday, April 24th, 2019 | 9:39 pm [onkel_mitch]
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REVIEW: Necrom -- The Light Has Never Been Here (2019, independent)
I usually don't review singles and EPs because limited material does not provide sufficient insight into composition dynamics that can be derived from full length work, and on many occasions such releases are offhand statements that don't necessarily represent the band's vision.
This is a rare exception, because, as it turned out, that's what I was waiting for for a fucking decade and a half.
Necrom is the latest project of Roman Saenko of Hate Forest, Drudkh (and countless other projects) fame, Varggoth of Nokturnal Mortum, Khaoth from Khors and a couple of young bloods . This year has already seen the release of The Onlooker which nodded to the old glory days of our beloved Hate Forest. While I liked the evolution of the band's sound, few things were still missing.
Well, this release finally dots all the i's and crosses the tees. This 3 song plus intro EP is by no means a next iteration of Drudkh sound towards the vacant throne of Hate Forest; neither it is, as the lineup might suggest, anything prog/folk/epic. This is straight-ahead old school death metal in pre-melodic tradition, with Saenko's roar finally back as a last piece of the puzzle that made HF so great. Neither it is an attempt to recreate HF or pick up where the latter left off; with so much time passed and so many things changed I don't think it's possible, rather the band shoots to the deeper roots, to the epoch before modern influences started piling up waves of commercialized extreme music. This sounds as if HF were formed a decade before they actually did. There is some Purity-style kinetics that sets the material apart from the likes of early Dismember, and adds atmosphere typically found in black metal albums, but that's about it. There is a lot in the way of nuances here, but I will hold my breath for now; as far as 3-track EP goes this is perfect and I don't know how to deal with perfect.
I am waiting for the full-length and biting my fingers. It is about fucking time.
You can form an independent opinion here.
Current Music: Necrom - The Light Has Never Been Here
| Saturday, March 9th, 2019 | 1:12 pm [onkel_mitch]
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REVIEW: Earth and Pillars -- Earth I (2014, Avantgarde)
One of the benefits of sticking to compact discs is similar to that of the archaeological excavations. The liberation of music industry in late 80s and the advent of CDs have laed to massive proliferation of all sorts of oddities that anyone who is not a devoted fan of the specific genre is unaware of. A decade and a half of unrestrained publishing left a rich layer of artifacts and curiosities that soon went forgotten, in many cases quite unjustly so. An inquisitive soul with a few hours of spare time on one's hands and burden of nostalgia occasionally stumbles upon pieces like this.
The case in point is the first album of the Italian project Earth and Pillars, whose cover on the second edition on Avantgarde music looked a lot like some EP by Agalloch who also have a song about pillars. As it turned out, this was not merely a coincidence. The band plays the atmospheric black metal on which West Coast sound definitely left its imprint, specifically, the early Wolves in the Throne Room and Velvet Cacoon come to mind. Another obvious point of reference is the attempts of Vinterriket at playing black metal. Christoph Ziegler is mostly an ambient (and, recently, neofolk) artist whose takes on BM mostly reduce to ambient music played with distorted guitars and, as result, by and large, fail miserably. In a setting with musicians originally rooted in lack metal, however, this plays out quite well Likewise, Earth and Pillows also mitigates abstract nature of dark ambient with more organic textures of post-West Coast, post-post-rock sound. Being similar to Battle Dagorath in format (the Italians stick to long buzzing semi-hypnotic excursions) is not as harsh as the former; perhaps, Italy is indeed warmer than Switzerland. If you like one chances are you will like the other.
Earth and Pillars are of minority projects in the subjenre that include more than a single player. The lineup is traditional guitar, bass, and in this case, a drum machinist. I am very skeptical of electronic drums, but in this case they are passable as they are buried deep enough in the mix of music intended to be trancelike that their implementation no longer matters. The same goes for vocals, which are decent and shifted from the canonical rasp towards semi-growl more common currently. You see, black metal is evolving, too.
The biggest problem of this album is that, while being good and competitive (surprisingly so) by itself, it is released about a decade and a half too late, after a brief revival of the strain of harsh semi-abstract of black metal at the turn of the century.
To form an independent opinion, proceed here.
Current Music: Earth and Pillars - Earth I
| Friday, March 1st, 2019 | 5:25 pm [onkel_mitch]
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REVIEW: Changes -- Fire of Life (1996, Hau Ruk!/TESCO)
This collection of archive recordings by an American duo dating from period of 1969-1974 begs comparison with a certain British band Venom. Both either predated or accidentally created (depending on your choice of the lore) a music genre which made the originators pale in comparison in every aspect if their art. Reportedly, Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch was so impressed with these recordings that he reissued the material on his imprint Hau Ruk! which is not typically associated with material like this. Several other zines praised the album as "truly deserving the name 'apocalyptic folk'".
One thing that I would admit that comparison with Venom is perhaps, a little bit stretched and does the disservice to Changes. Venom, at least in their earliest incarnation (as well as the majority of the first wave black metal acts) plainly sucked at their performing and songwrighting abilities. Changes, however, did not suck, they were decent and competitive enough not to be dismissed from the array of better known psychedelic folk acts, but hardly more than just that. Sure, the story of the duo interleaves with certain philosophical, metaphysical an religious movements, such as The Process, Church of the Final Judgement, however, late 60's produced prophets, visionaries, cults, sects and plain nutcases in quantities unseen by any other period of time in the modern history, many of whom explored borderline states of mind. Most, if not all Woodstock generation did that, not to mention characters like Charlie Manson or Jim Baker a.k.a. Father Yod.
While it is common for people to confuse "the influential" and "the great", it is not entirely clear why these songs were even considered influential in the first place, aside from rather remote factors. From the commentary to the album by authors themselves it follows that less than half of the songs even touch upon the apocalyptic themes, and some of those do so laterally, e.g. not by actual content but rather by what was going behind the scenes when the song was penned. Nobody calls Arthur Brown apocalyptic rock despite his first record, written several years earlier than this was more apocalyptic than anything in "Fire of Life".
This is not to say that this record is a waste. As I mentioned above, it is quite decent album, which mostly does sound like Simon and Garfunkel, at times indeed getting slightly more delicate and transcending. However, it is not difficult to find more impressive records from music prospective originating from that era.
To form your own opinion of this album proceed here.
Current Music: Changes -- Fire of Life
| Saturday, February 23rd, 2019 | 7:38 pm [onkel_mitch]
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REVIEW: Current 93 -- The Light is Leaving Us All (2018, The Spheres)
As we all know, Current 93 is a cult project, meaning that if you know what it is all about, you are probably a devout follower and stay tuned. If you don't give a shit, you are not in the loop, not reading this review, and, well, don't give a shit. That is, there is no middle ground. So, there is probably not much I can tell to those who read even this far except a little story of how little it takes to ruin an otherwise decent album.
Current 93 started of as a some sort of experimental outfit (in 1984 "Dog Blood Rising" did sound out-there). To stay experimental for over three decades and a half one need to be have a substantial amount of artistic craziness, which David Tibet does not. Otherwise the creativity of a project inevitably reduces to exploiting on of the number of successful formulas that one develops over decades of activity.
I haven't followed Current 93 since mid-2000s and not aware of the developments since "Black Ships Ate the Sky". However it seems that the year of 2018 finds the project in the trench they dug in late 90s, sometime around "Soft Black Stars", that is, melancholic crooning to largely acoustic backdrop with occasional slide guitar and assorted percussive tinkery. David Tibet cannot sing in the common sense of the term and instead utilizes a chant-like style with which he delivers what is supposed to be a loosely joined array of sort of apocalyptic images, many of which made their way into titles of his albums and songs. This is a very delicate method which invokes corresponding atmosphere when it works and turns into a blatant gibberish when it does not, especially in cases where there isn't much of the instrumental cacophony to hind this behind.
Unfortunately, this album exemplifies the latter case. The concept of ultimate hopelessness of being and life's decay is a good candidate for an apocalyptic imagery. Trying to maniacally ram it down into the center of the listener's spine is not so. The line "The light is leaving us all" is repeated several times in every fricken song that has lyrics, except "The Kettle's On" (which perhaps was deemed so unstable that it was wisely decided not to overload it). By the third track I grew suspicious of the plot and started paying attention. Yep. By the middle of the album it became annoying to the point that red churches and dead kings lost all their menacing aura. By the time the album delivered awfully profound statements like "If a man breaks a bone of another man, his bone is broken" ("Fair weather"), the whole affair began to sound downright comical. Following that, another "The light is leaving us all" nearly made my day. Thanks, David, we got the idea, let's move on.
You can form your own opinion of this album by listening to it yourself.
Current Music: Current 93 - The Light s Leaving Us All
| 3:49 pm [onkel_mitch]
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REVIEW: Windswept - The Onlooker (2019, Season of Mist)
Ever since Roman Saenko shifted the focus of his creativity to Drudkh and laid Hate Forest to rest, I missed the latter a lot. In retrospect, in mid-2000s Hate Forest managed to accomplish something I haven't seen for almost a decade by then. That is, they managed to create compelling and powerful material while operating within a scope of extremely limited means. Simply put, I haven't heard music encompassing everything black metal was about with the minimalist palette since Ildjarn. While the two projects are not particularly similar as far as the actual music is concerned, the purity and stark beauty of approach and execution certainly put these two projects in the same category.
Naturally, every time I found out that another project by Saenko is launched I took a look at it and, in most cases, walked away in disappointment. There were occasional moments when he hit the mark (for example, the second album of Blood of Kungu), but in most cases some of ingredients that made Hate Forest that great was missing.
Enter Windswept, another project launched two years ago presumably to explore the path of instant enlightenment; the first album "The Great Cold Steppe" was reportedly recorded over the span of three days. In the nutshell, Windswept is comprised of the same musicians as Drudkh sans Thurious, for better or for worse. Whether or not the band meant to move back to a harsher and more primitive sound is unclear, but the material does indeed sound like Drudkh covering Hate Forest; the sound bears all signatures of the former and the songwriting is essentially of the latter. For those who followed the development of Drudkh over the last decade that does not seem like a much of the diversification, or might not even warrant starting a new project. Sure, Drudkh carved themselves a niche of established sound and aesthetics, which, because of its success, will inevitably leave an imprint on everything that comes out from the camp. While this outlook is reasonable, one, as a BM follower, will ultimately be more interested in nuances. There are some.
Naturally, the album picks up where the previous album left off. I was not particularly happy with "The Great Cold Steppe" because of its utter lack of variation almost to the point of sounding as a demo. "The Onlooker", on the contrary is not only more varied musically but also arranged as the concise album. The toy jukebox ties both ends nicely and gets the album closer to telling a story. The lyrics are not provided, however it seems that conceptually Windswept is further removed from romantic roots of Drudkh therefore being more abstract in virtues. Hence, the nod towards Hate Forest is a reasonable move. Some moments do resemble parts from "Purity", refracted through melodicism of Drudkh. There are few things that prevent me from being totally happy though. First, the music here is a bit too melodic for my tastes; or, more precisely, the noodling is often too much upfront. Second, I miss the growl of Thurious which, among other things, made Hate Forest special. As much as I appreciate Roman's canonical snarl, it is simply not powerful enough to turn it into real killer, although essentially all other ingredients are present.
In the nutshell, while this album does not do enough to break the mold of Drudkh aesthetics entirely, it likely points to undercurrents in the cam that would eventually carry the masterpiece of the old glory days.
You can always form you opinion by listening to it yourself.
Current Music: Windswept - The Onlooker
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