list.co.uk/music DOOM METAL MOSS Horrible Night (Rise Above Records) ●●●●●
INDIE ROCK PURLING HISS Water On Mars (Drag City) ●●●●●
Records | MUSIC
Regarded as one of the starkest and most suffocating English doom bands of the last ten years, the return of Southampton’s Moss is another step into the void. Horrible Night sees them distance themselves from their guttural and drone metal roots into far more riff-based, melodic matter, akin to Saint Vitus or early Sabbath – whilst still yielding to the same swamp-like death fuzz of their noisier beginnings. It marks a deliberate departure from the crop of Sunn O))) plagiarists into a more organic metal backbone which seems to have been lost in recent years. Opener and title track, ‘Horrible Night’ arouses the spirit of classic doom metal
and New Wave of British heavy metal, but also drops in screeching wails from vocalist Olly Pearson which sounds equal parts Ozzy and Khanate. It’s a nice cohesion of old and new wantonness which seems to be a bleak retrogression of sorts. Other highlights include ‘Dark Lady’ with an utterly snarling riff parallel to Tony Iommi on elephant tranquilizers, along with their closing opus ‘I Saw Them that Night’ which slogs you through a Kenneth Anger-esque vortex of satanic smoke and psychedelic transitions.
As with label partners and smoking buddies, Electric Wizard, Moss aren’t attempting anything progressive within the realms of this stoner framework.
After several years floating around Philadelphia in the same trashy, lo-fi puddle as fellow longhairs Kurt Vile and The War On Drugs, Mike Polizze – aka Purling Hiss (toiletal pun ahoy) – has polished up his act with second album Water On Mars, much as his tunes might remain caked in good-ol’ lowdown dirty fuzz.
Where Purling Hiss’s 2010 debut Public Service Announcement sounded like it was recorded very quickly, while very high, on very low-quality equipment – such has been the recent curious fascination among certain US indie sorts for self-recording in a way that nostalgically replicate tinny, scuzzy tapes of their youth (see also: Ariel Pink, Ducktails, John Maus) – Water On Mars finds Polizze stepping blinking into an actual studio. Not that he seems overly enamoured by its multi-tracking potential: Water On Mars ditches the retro schtick and benefits from tidier mixes, but stays firmly rooted to power-trio rigours, with drummer Mike Sneeringer and bassist Kiel Everett laying down economically powerful rhythm tracks across which Polizze smears a woe-betide-me slackery drawl and guitar anti-heroics power-hosing on the wailing overdrive and wah-wah.
‘Lolita’ weds a Dinosaur Jr-alike alt-rock riff to a throaty vocal that’s pure grunge. Evidently beholden to the full spectrum of American gutter guitar music, Polizze will mix and match as he chooses, thank you very much. ‘Mercury Retrograde’ – the best song on the album – could be a west coast harmonic pop song dragged through the mud. Acoustic death rattle ‘Dead Again’ calls
But given the very nature of their recent direction and retro-aesthetic, it would seem preposterous to attempt much of a modern twist or angle when their concoction of riffs, drugs and volume is entirely effective in its own context. A European and UK tour is scheduled for April and May and given Moss’ more structured approach to these songs, it seems like a rare and interesting transition to catch the trio in the flesh. (Nick Herd) ■ See metalblade.com/us/artists/ moss/ for more info. on much of the laugh-a-minute cheer that made Kurt Cobain so famous, while ‘Face Down’ is practically paint-by-numbers Iggy and The Stooges. Polizze remains some way from presenting a songwriter who disseminates his influences rather than simply mimics them, then. But now that he’s made a clean spot in all the mucky production that once shrouded Hurling Piss – sorry, Purling Hiss – well, there might yet be a proper band under there somewhere. (Malcolm Jack)
ELECTRONIC/ DUBSTEP JAMES BLAKE Overgrown (Atlas) ●●●●● ELECTRONIC STEFAN BLOMEIER AND CLAIRE Worlds Beside Worlds (Instructional Media) ●●●●●
James Blake provokes that kind of feverish excitement you’d associate with the giddy hormonal urges of Beliebers, but instead he enchants the coolly detached habitués of Boiler Room. It’s understandable. He is after all, an impossibly zeitgeisty and prodigiously talented musician, songwriter, and song-interpreter, who has struck a mellifluous chord with those drawn to the soothing allure of low end, but who don’t want its other grittier textures. He's a troubadour for the Burial generation. On his second album, Overgrown, he revisits his rarefied stylings: his delicate timbre plaintively cooing over nocturnal bass and ethereal beats. It’s bewitching and at times brilliant but also fleeting – where one will hear tender, others will hear wan, insipid. Where one hears intimate, stark others hear noncommittal, opaque. This is the dichotomy at the centre of James Blake, and you either buy into it or you don’t. He envelopes these songs in an extremely judicious selection of contemporary sonic tropes, but beyond his expertly crafted veneer sometimes lies an anodyne centre of effete, affected crooning. Not always. His charms are obvious, not just to fans but also collaborators. Here we get an incongruous cameo from Wu-Tang’s RZA rapping about ‘fish and chips’ on ‘Take A Fall For Me’, and Brian Eno adding some warm bath ambiance to the jittery buried groove of ‘Digital Lion’. Elsewhere, the opening track draws you in with that come-hither subterranean bass before opening up with more expansive synths and subtle keys. It’s potent, contemplative and majestic, and a pretty wonderful reveal. Album closer ‘Our Love Comes Back’ is more poised and subtle but has that solitary, glacial grandeur Blake is good at. He is equally adept at writing songs with a mirage-like quality; they appear fully-developed but deeper inspection unearths something fragile and tepid (‘To The Last’, ‘Retrograde’). Detractors will remain unmoved but Overgrown will again delight those who appreciate Blake’s fey, enigmatic talents. (Mark Keane)
Glasgow micro-label Instructional Media is a really interesting little venture; a record label, but more a stylistic experiment. Seemingly driven by a commitment to strangeness and deliberately bad design, it’s the little details – hand-packaged cassettes and gaudy 80s art, even down to titles and fonts – that give the two Instructional Media releases so far a fascinating and collectable quality. Continuing in the retro-fascinated vein, the label’s third release, Worlds Beside
Worlds is a new collaboration/split album from Danish electronic artist Stefan Blomeier, and Atlanta synth-whiz Claire (aka Elise Tippins of Featureless Ghost and visual arts project, Fantastic Lands). Consisting of one collaboration, and four tracks each – Worlds is an electronic salute to the technological wasteland; a love letter written on an Commodore 64. Flitting between minimal atmospherics and subtle party crashers, the prominent use of vintage synth textures and eggshell-thin drum machines conjures up fictional dystopian nightclubs or late-night, Tron cityscapes; the distant, glacial worlds that 80s movies told us the future might look (and sound) like. A perfect example is opener, 'Worlds Beside Worlds'. A collaboration between Blomeier and Claire, it’s a stirring wash of synthetic wonder, and easily the most intoxicating and unique track; while Blomeier’s pulsating ‘A Mighty Fortress’ shows the punchier side of their space-aged aesthetic. More often than not however, both artists test the limits of repetition and scarcity. Even in a club,
the excruciating slow builds and minimalism of ‘Terminal Gaze’ would test a patron’s patience. By the time we hit Bloemeier’s ‘Trance Regression’ however, this problem is immediately reversed. The bombardment of electronics is unprecedented and provides one of few genuinely audacious moments on the record, through its driving melodic sub-bass. Claire’s closer, ‘Illusions of the End’ continues Blomeier's more progressive approach, ending the album in slick, solid fashion, albeit a little too late. (Ryan Drever) 21 Mar–18 Apr 2013 THE LIST 79