| CD REVIEW Silber Records special # 3 : Clang Quartet – From Oceans To Autumn - Goddakk |
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This third special ought to end this series of specials on the Silber Records releases of this year (so far). Upcoming releases will most probably get separate reviews, as they'll most certainly come to the Concrete Web headquarters one at a time. As promised, we focus our attention this time to Clang Quartet, From Oceans To Autumn, and Goddakk, two of which are actually one-man musical expressions. ----------------------------------------------------- Contradictory to what the name of this project suggests, Clang Quartet is really the one-man project of drummer Scotty Irving (of Prog Metal band Geezer Lake) which he started in 1997 as a personal expression of both sound and his faith. Besides playing the drums and having those sounds altered through electronics, he's invented several home-made electro-acoustic instruments (those most notable were made from saws, masks, and crutches) but also uses guitars, keyboards, and sound collages of family tape recordings from his childhood and field recordings for his sonic interpretations of the Passion of Jesus Christ. His shows are a constant improvisation, never lingering on the recorded moments as could be heard on his 1997 and 1998 demo recordings Hackneyed Psalms And Other Fried Features and Saturday Night Sliver. He was then noticed by Silber CEO Brian John Mitchell, whom decided to release the split cd-R Cemented In Stone (his own Remora balancing Irving's noisy sound explosions) in 1999, before releasing Clang Quartet's official debut Jihad on CD in 2000. The follow-up album The Separation Of Church And Hate came in 2003, and finding his music was strongly misunderstood, Irving focused on live appearance from then on. Through his own Fried Features, he self-released the 2005 cd-Rs Noise And Other Road Sounds (with material collected from several live shows), Originals, Tributes, Rarities (collected compilation with unreleased material) and The Demo Years 1, The Demo Years 2, and The Demo Years 3 (collected demo works from his 1997-1998 cassette releases), and in 2007 RRR Records issued the vinyl album Revival Of The Wretch (featuring live studio recordings). Captured on Ava is a live performance from 2008 at the Ava Gardner Independent Film Festival, a 30 ½ minute exposé on the cacophony, chaos and order which is so typical for Clang Quartet's music, and which is so difficult to explain. There's an almost 8-minute passage where Irving actually uses no electronics or samples at all, but before and after the sounds he makes are at least partly shrouded to those of us, whom have not been to any of his shows! Well, I've enjoyed more experimental music of this ilk in the past, you know...but in this very case I feel the link to the musical expression and faith a bit hard to find. Ah well, as a means to break from Silber's usual output, this is certainly a welcome album. Would not put it on as background on any of the family's Sunday get-togethers though! 81/100 ----------------------------------------------------- Following the demise of their former band Autumn Is Forever (1997-2004), Brian Helms (guitar & samples) and Allen Knight (bass) started this Charlotte, NC based band in Summer 2006 by recruiting Eddie McDaniel (drums) and Jodi Haas (guitar) to record their debut full-length album Calmed By The Tide, which was released in 2007 (and re-released in 2010) through Forgotten Empire Records. In July 2008 FOTA released a split EP with Scottish labelmates Fire on The Horizon, recorded the EP Equanimity to offer it as a free download through their website in 2007, and then went on to release their sophomore album On Earth As It Is in October 2010. the band then caught the attention of Silber, who signed the band for the release of this free download EP and the upcoming full-length Oath Of Eternals. Short and sweat history-of-the-band, and we can easily keep our musical appraisal of the band pretty short as well. FOTA brings us hypnotic music in a broad range of instrumental Post-Metal and Drone Rock, with influences from the likes of Isis, Taken, Earth, Sunn O))), and Rosetta...and people into those bands and instrumental Shoegazer (high factor of that here) can almost blindly order anything ever released by this band! Oh well, of course you could first download the 2-track, 18-minute EP from the label's website, eh? Ya gotta love the samples on the second track (does that come from NASA transmissions to some space craft?). Ooh...and more material by the band can be heard at (www.) myspace.com/experimentalautumn. I'm definitely looking forward to the full-length, and checking as soon as possible whether any of the band's previous releases is still available! Yeah Baby, year-list material again! 98/100 ----------------------------------------------------- This is a side-project of one Martin Newman, also known as the guitarist for Boston-based Silber recording act Plumerai. With Goddakk, he concentrates on instrumental music and put out his first outing under that name with the contribution of a track titled “Sounds Like Christmas” on the Silber X-mas 2000 compilation cd-R (released in 2000...just to make that point well understood). Goddakk's first full-length (6 tracks, duration 46 minutes) Monument To A Broken Age wasreleased on cd-R by Silber in 2006, and apparently got such labeling as Industrial Shoegaze, Aggressive Ambient, and Cinematic Post-Rock. Supposedly (or at least so announced) played on the guitar, I nevertheless discern some piano play on the album's 13-minute track (I'm afraid I cannot tell you the title, as I was not given that, and was quite unable to find it – possibly more fuck-up from the side of the editor-in-chief, I guess)...and I have some problems believing the ensuing (and with a 2:10 length also much shorter) track would not have any keyboards (or synths) in it either. As for some of the wackiness on the other tracks, I'm quite willing one can produce such sounds with effect pedals (I mean, I've been there myself, so I know and understand that much). Nice also is that Martin still incorporates some ethereal guitar into his music, diverging from other musicians in the field by incorporating Ambient noise and repetitive loops into actual song structures. As for the experiments from former reviewers to try and put Goddakk music into a certain “category”, I can only say that some of 'em went a bit too obvious. “Industrial Shoegazer”? That's so obviously coming from someone wanting to make a link to Martin's musical expression in his “normal” band! Aggressive Ambient? If that ain't a contradiction in terms! Cinematic Post-Rock? Well, that leaves the best an open-ended terminology I heard so far. I'll even use it myself, but with the necessary expansion. So, how does “Cinematic Post-Rock with Ambient and occasional Soft-Industrial influences sound to you? You can listen to a song off each of Goddakk's cd-R albums on the artist's page at the label's website (and there's samples to be savoured off the rest of the debut album at cdbaby.com. Again, top “Best Albums Of 2011”-list material here! 98/100 Tony. |
