by Aker
Mon, 19 Jul 2021
Read in 5 minutes
The Week in Review: Aker’s Deep Dive (14/6 - 20/6)
The Interdimensional Vortex is a bottomless pit. Diving deep into the murky depths is a risky game. Gems can be unearthed from the thick mire of releases beneath the tasty-if-safe pickings from the surface. There’s a reason, though, why many releases float the deeper depths. Some are niche - too extreme, too experimental, poorly publicised - and some are just bad. We embrace all at the Vortex. We know gems are rare and rarely we find them. But there are always interesting if flawed releases floating about in the deep aether. So, join me - Aker - for a weekly review of a week’s deep diving.
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Eilífur (Eternal) is the debut record by Icelandic composer Viktor Orri Árnason. Sometimes a record instantly gratifies. The vast orchestral depressiveness, smothering drones, and grand vocal layerings are a funerary delight. There’s more than just downcast navelgazing; Eilífur glimmers with blissful moments of warmth, offset by subtle, more sombre shifts in tone led by the stringed elements of the record. Árnason, supported by the Budapest Art Orchestra and multiple vocalists, is an expert arranger of strings; the textural richness of string led elements (especially the pit-deep thrust in the lower range) in opposition to the light dexterity of vocals is truly arresting. Eilífur makes a lot of noise by being quiet. By which I mean the vast depth comes from the amplification of tender sound trapped in what feels like the most intimate of wilderness caverns. The power of this record lies in the background; Eilífur sounds like it’s reaching into a bottomless well.
Here’s a peculiar diversion. Shukai is an Estonian archive-record label focussing on bringing back lost tapes from the 60s-80s, particularly Soviet film/TV music. Volodymyr Bystriakov’s Battlefield (1986) is a late night TV acid sci-fi trip, eleven minutes of space-age soundtrack retroism. I can’t find much about Bystriakov online. Is he a prolific pioneer from the olden days or is this entire thing a well constructed contemporary tribute to lost sound? Well, after translating a Russian wiki page it appears Bystriakov is real. He created lots of Soviet TV music, and is active in anti-Ukranian propagandist circles. Bystriakov is a man trapped in a Soviet timewarp and Battlefield (1986) is a bubbly jaunt through hazy nostalgia that should appeal to disciples of the synth, especially as this is as authentic as it comes.
From Soviet Russia to Japan now. Haco’s Nova Naturo, at first, sounds like the fragile spiritual offshoot of dream pop masters Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. But there’s more of a pop sprightliness and acoustic deftness that throbs with the dreamworld. There’s a playfulness to Haco’s pixie-like compositions - sometimes the record is soft and undefinable (“Teardrops of Aurora”), sometimes the record is chunkier and danceable (“Pendulum Feelings”), and sometimes the record is a blur of quirk (“Spinning Lantern”). For the most part, Nova Naturo errs towards the disembodied, daintier zones of dream pop with the occasional foray into throbbing nightmare zones. Nova Naturo’s flow is disjointed, pulling it down, but for the most part Haco knows how to twist the right nozzles of the dream machine.
From dreamy Japan to dreamy New Orleans with MJ Guider. Temporary Requiem is a much more serious, trippy ripple through avant-pop. This is depressive, bedroom pop-craft framed by religious-spiritual themes (the record consists of altered passages of the traditional Latin requiem mass, structured to accompany a choreographed dance). Temporary Requiem is an uneasy wash that recalls elements of Chelsea Wolfe and similar neo-folk/ambient female led projects. There is little in the way of organic instrumentation here; Guider fiddles with cold electronic sounds in a haunting chalice that is as meditative as it is intense. “Benediction: Tribute to Leviathan, Her Ancestors and Her Progeny” stands out for its harsher thrust of buzzing, drone sound, holding strong against the wispy genuflect of the majority of the record.
It’s Aker-bait time with Belgian post-punk five-piece Whispering Sons channelling their inner Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and Gang of Four. It’s still 1979 in Belgium. Fenne Kuppens’ deep female vocals add a unique gait to the punchy broodiness of Several Others, as do rounded electronic throbs that add buoyancy to the gothic anchorings. The robot-like ritual repetition of “Flood” is Whispering Sons at their best, especially with Kuppens probing with deep vocals and guitar feedback encasing the punk in a sticky film. There are some more laborious, directionless moments on the record, but - as with “Flood” and much of the stronger back end tracks - there are some real singular gems.
Mountains don’t quite move in Mountain Movers’ World What World. More like a jagged cleft in usually smooth terrain, Mountain Movers’ jammy psych-rock is a fuzzy wave that rarely shifts away from guitar-led groove. What is alluring, however, is the sultry, sweaty dirt of its mix. The album is caked in a crackling, wafer-like gruffness that, for me, carries the same charm as early Dinosaur Jr and Pavement. Beyond the simplistic passages, the little cranks and unhinged amp noises - though not overbearing or anything crazy - wrap the album in a charming choke hold. Though my feedback of the record’s content isn’t glowing, the feedback conjured from Mountain Movers’ eighth record is a decent massage for the brain.
Equally charming - and also cloying - is Trevor Sensor, a husky steam train picking up elements of every singer-songwriter to ever exist from 1960 to the present day. On Account of Exile Vol. 1 combines a motley mix of folk-punk-rock with thick layers of theatricality in the form of symphonic indulgence. Sensor’s voice is a gravelly mix of Dylan, Bill Fay, Kevin Coyne, and The Tallest Man On Earth, and he occasionally bursts from a softer husk to a punk growl. Sensor is a medley man, picking up glimmers of gold from artists of yore and packaging it into a 33-minute taster menu of vague literary references and tales of drifter woe. Why not listen to the actual old masters rather than these young up-starts, though? This is an interesting record because it’s so unapologetically a facsimile of a distant time.
https://open.spotify.com/album/7bVc70bdlW7HrafFf6LfC3?si=-_1lnwKTTRutVe_yB3ydMg&dl_branch=1