I really enjoyed last album ‘Herbslicht’ by Italian maestro Regen Graves. If his name is familiar to you this is probably due to recordings in the stratosphere of doom with the likes of Tony Tears and Abysmal Grief. When working as a solo artist however we are in a very different place, one that is no less out-there but perhaps more in the far-flung corners of space. Regen takes the listener on a journey, vocals are not necessary, nor is an explanation or a narrative which is exactly what I realised last time around. It is up to your imagination to fill in the gaps and travel where the music takes you. There are no right or wrong answers although there might be clues. The first of these are possibly (nothing is certain here) found on the cover. This CD is housed in a nice DVD sized style pack with white surround. The central image photo is incredibly striking and begats no end of questions. To me it looks like a post / cold war image from somewhere like East Germany or maybe Russia of a sprawling tenement that may or may not have people dwelling within. It doesn’t look particularly safe and it is as though it has been left for ruin, the 2 strange figures at the foot probably have the answers but we do not, or do we?
So, the music itself, what is it? Well electronic and very much in the vein of that cold-war vibe essentially. This harks back to the radiophonic days of sound manipulation and signals that are not quite of this earth being beamed to and from it to orbiting stations. It could at times even be morse code but there is plenty of substance to it rather than mere bloops and bleeps. The other clue we are given apart from track titles is that this album is inspired by the filmworks of Hungarian Béla Tarr. I have heard of some of his work such as Wreckmeister Harmonies (2000) but sadly have to remain ignorant of his form of “social cinema” on the whole. Apparently ‘Autumn Almanac’ (1984) “follows the inhabitants of a run-down apartment as they struggle to live together while sharing their hostilities.” The cover art now makes some sense as we enter their ‘Immutable Reality’ via the first track of the album.
Wind rushes over a heavy throbbing sound and things get eerie via piped organ works which leaves one imagining a phantom of the opera at macabre play over this desolate landscape. Ghostly voices and other ethereal sounds are faint in the background. This sounds utterly fantastic production wise and obviously headphones and shutting out the world and other earthly distractions are the best way to experience and get the full effect here. The soundscape slowly expands over 10-minutes and provides a sense of unease as it gradually gains volume and the effects become noisy and even harsh. This is cold and somewhat confusing in its ominous approach. ‘The Last Stage Of Decline’ has warping sound and sharp stabbing keyboards a bit like the aforementioned morse code, providing dots and dashes. There’s a strong sense of Krautrock at play here and we have another voice sampled, maybe from one of the aforementioned films adding to the strangeness of it all. I have been listening to a lot of Kraftwerk lately and the glistening aspects and pulses here are not beamed down from a million miles away.
Next, we gaze out or through ‘The Window’ as a voyeur, it’s all very strange and alien. There’s a throbbing backbone and no shortage of intriguing noises. It’s actually quite calm and relaxing rather than foreboding but no doubt not for long as we are to enter ‘Diegetic Distortion’ which has an industrial clamour and clank about it with the banging of machinery leading into the domain of Throbbing Gristle, SPK and Hermann Kopp. Thinking of his work in the decaying world of Jorg Buttgereit there must be a corpse rotting in our building, its stench starting to permeate and add to the nauseating feeling of abandonment. ‘Nothing Will Be Better’ is the stark message at the end and there is a droning feel of dereliction left to fill this cold and barren void, bells toll perhaps a call to church and that mad organist at the start. The circle completes.
There is a slight pick up here in the form of extra track ‘Heat’ which ups tempo and has a bit more of a futuristic (80’s) synthwave atmosphere. It could well be a necessary tonic as the main themes of the album leave you wanting to take a cold shower and rub the grimness and grime off. I can see how the inspiration behind this works and I can imagine the music being the perfect visual accompaniment of the films of Béla Tarr, which I really now want to explore. Climax is certainly an incredibly effective listening experience and one that is likely to linger in the memory and come back and haunt again and again.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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