Stories have always been a key component of human communication, community forming and learning. Mankind has probably been telling stories for one purpose or other since developing coherent speech. And the way we tell stories evolved alongside our own development. The more sophisticated we got, the more elaborate, the more complex were the narratives we told. Oral tales became written ones, became plays, radio dramas and movies.
Music has always been an important part of storytelling. A movie without a film score or with prolonged silences feels instantly weird. Music creates and enhances atmosphere; it can add entire subplots. Good storytelling, one could say, goes hand in hand with good music, and not many would argue that it is otherwise. However, the fact that this dependency also exists the other way round is rarely acknowledged. Good music tells a story. Storytelling is an integral part of appealing music.
One of the best story tellers in music is Welshman Brian Williams, better known as Lustmord. The pioneer of the dark ambient genre can look back on a long, rich career as musician, sound designer and film score composer – and it shows. Judging from his newest work, and just like you would expect from a good storyteller, Williams is only getting better with age.
For Alter Williams has paired up with Karin Park. In the metal community she is probably best known for her involvement in the noise rock band Årabrot, but she also has an independent musical career unconnected to Årabrot. The pairing of Lustmord and Park is a combination extraordinaire. Why? Because Karin Park’s woeful vocalizations add additional levels of storytelling and meaning to Lustmord’s dystopian soundscapes.
The story told on Alter is ancient and new at the same time. It is also a highly unusual one, because it is communicated without words. Similar to the singing style of Lisa Gerrad or Laure Le Prunenec, Karin Park’s sad song contains no recognizable language. Yet her performance, certainly among her most impressive so far, is so credible, that no meaning is missed.
Alter begins as a trip under water and into space, to the beginnings of life and the history of mankind. Over eight tracks it marks and beweeps the many mistakes made, the myriad of tragedies, the billions of individual regrets. It ends more level and less dramatic than it began, indicating that what was hanging by a thread is lost forever.
The album’s soundscapes are ingeniously woven form multiple elements the listing of which can help you get an idea, but can in no way replace experiencing them. Deep, electronical humming and buzzing combine with the sound of bells and horns, of organs, whale song, sonar sounds, distant thunder rumbling, breathing and swooshing to create marine and celestial soundscapes. And into all of this are placed Karin Park’s goose-bumps-inducing vocals. She takes the role of a modern-day Cassandra who is cursed knowing that her prophecies are true while no one believes her.
I do not often give instructions on how to listen to an album but in this instance, I feel they are appropriate and that they will improve your listening experience. To properly experience Alter you need a pair of good head phones, a bit of time, quiet and a dark room. Think of listening to the album as like going to the theatre to see a play, more precisely a Greek tragedy. The performance is so impressive, so dramatic, so heart-wrenching that you probably won’t have the guts to listen to it many times, so better make your first listen count.
Brian Williams a.k.a. Lustmord and Karin Park have created a mind-blowing, other-worldly piece of music with Alter which is trying nothing less but to redefine what music can do. Namely, nothing short of telling stories, stories that can be globally, universally understood, because they do not rely on words.
(9/10 Slavica)
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