What is exactly is the relationship between the artist and the audience? Does either owe the other anything? When I was young and full of fire and self-righteous opinions, Cold Lake and One Second felt like betrayals. Of course they were nothing of the sort and whilst I still maintain both are bad albums, I was not ‘betrayed’ in the slightest. They simply were not albums I liked, and still don’t. I might in a bad mood still say one was the result of a band confused and badly advised/pressured and the other was a band simply fed up of the path they’d been on and maybe pissed off with being expected to do certain things so looked somewhere else. So to answer my own question; the only thing I expect from an artist is to do they music they want to do. I may have hopes and desires but they are mine and should not be put on the artist. Also the artist should expect nothing of the audience; maybe listening to it before deciding on its merits but that’s it and no one has to listen to a note.
But here we are and I chose to review this out of curiosity and with and open mind. I didn’t expect anyone else to leap at it and I thought it deserved more than to be left unremarked upon. I also, just to be clear, was not expecting Nocturnal Poisoning Pt2, or even ‘Defective Epitaph Pt2 (the last album I own). I was in fact blank in my expectations.
So Xasthur, Malefic, Scott Conner. Here he presents us with another double album, Twenty-three tracks. The music he wants to do, here presented to us with PR assurance of that very fact. That there may be certain hints of black metal as that is simply because it is what he wants to do.
Calm down at the back. No. This is not a black metal album in any shape or form, which is not a problem in the slightest. However, there is a fair argument that this is not an album at all. The opening couple of tracks do indeed have a blend of DSBM and black ambient to them before the third tracks slips into sweet, deftly played acoustic guitar noodling with a pleasant lilt to it and the fourth follows suit. Then the dark ambient briefly reasserts itself and then the folky proggy strumming returns. And sadly there you pretty much have it for twenty-three tracks.
There is no flow or design to the track order for me, none. It would have been possible, for instance, to pick all the more dark/ambient tracks and place them together and the same for the acoustic guitar tracks. Two albums in one. Find a flow and a theme maybe. But clearly that was absolutely not the intent here, perhaps because they feared that it might have been seen as a surrender and a return to black metal roots in one half and so the second half would be ignored. I don’t know. I’m guessing, plucking straws from the wind in the absence of an obvious motive.
But the lack of flow, the seemingly random order means this is a collection of twenty-three tracks that have to stand alone, without support or context. Sadly, for me that simply doesn’t work here as a four or five minute sweet prog strumming as an island between two unrelated darker ambient pieces is jarring. And even just dipping in randomly sadly none of the songs actually go anywhere. It is a collections of vignettes; all played with high musical dexterity and competence and with a pleasant production but feeling nothing more than snapshots of ideas not fully followed through on. There is no focus or overall intent here that I can grasp, beyond “Here are twenty-three tracks. Have at them or not as you see fit.”
A fair enough outlook for the artist.
Well I have. Scott Conner has done what he wants here; this is the music he wants to present to the world. Individually from borderline DSBM to almost lounge folk it is sweetly played and presented. That I applaud – it is a tough business and art form and sticking to your own desires in the art you create is vital. Xasthur are doing that.
As a listener I stick to my impression and yes it has had more than one play to form that: This is a collection of vignettes and whether that is worth it to the listener is up to the individual listener. For me it tugs and pecks and jerks me this way then that with little sense of form or reason to it and no focus I could discern. Frankly it is all a little perplexing but not in the way of difficult music, but of the seemingly deliberately random presentation of underdeveloped ideas.
In a lot of ways this reminds me of my favourite author of the last twenty to thirty years: Caitlin R. Kiernan. Critically acclaimed, winner or nominee for practically every horror, fantasy and science fiction award you can think of but commercially eking out a borderline living as her work is not ‘popular’ in style or themes. Her vocabulary and ability to wield the English language is phenomenal, the best since Ray Bradbury perhaps and yet she found in the end the pain of writing novels far too much to bear. After her last one we had a couple of novellas and then just vignettes, dozens upon dozens and then she decided to return to her training and her first love; palaeontology where she now once more earns her living. This album feels like that. Creating an album is too great a strain and so we get ideas and snapshots of half thoughts. Kudos for the integrity, a shrug and a pass for the music. Sorry.
(4/10 Gizmo)
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