Tag: hauntology

REVIEW: Pram – Across The Meridian (2018)

Their first album in their discography since The Moving Frontier 11 years prior, Pram’s Across The Meridian is a beautiful record that revels in the exploration of sonic space. 

Much like their domino record label mates Clinic, Pram fulfill the post-punk school’s vision of electronic and acoustic instrumentation in a stylistic melting pot. 

Prams’ sampling of library music acts as a sort of warp room of the 20th century, creating distinct textural layers on any given verse. Combining the hauntological with playful interpretation, Across The Meridian is an exotica work around an idea of time (specifically the 20th century), not place.

Pram have a cinematic versatility. Jazz, psychedelic guitar fuzz, ambient- really there’s too much to name here- build in strange ways around light and agile percussion. They’re playing with a toy box full of thematic and stylized sounds in a really fun way. 

Even at it’s darkest, a childlike sense of awe permeates. A myriad of instrumentation, sometimes crystal clear and sometimes veiled in overdrive show the listener a musical collective at play. There’s no real rules with music, no genre or social structures adhered to, and Pram have embraced this in the advancement of their work.

Across The Meridian is dark and haunting in its own way- not grim. It really is a musical iSpy book more than anything: A healthy balance of fun and beauty. 

For fans of: Clinic, Gang Gang Dance, German Army

Like Pram? Give these a listen: Iosu Vakerizzo, Steroid Maximus, Malakas

REVIEW: The Caretaker – An empty bliss beyond this World (2011)

If the concept of this album hasn’t already been beaten into you by a dozens of other bloggers, let me explain:

It’s a bunch of old ballroom music samples that are looped, and the ware, dust, etc. of the sampled material depicts the degradation and repetition of memory, especially as an affect of Alzheimer’s disease and/or dementia. Slather on spacious reverb to depict the darkness on the edge of memory, yadda yadda yadda and you have An empty bliss beyond this World.

Some perverse way of interacting with the past like making puppets out of corpses, as all sampling in a way is. But at its core The Caretaker- given name Leyland James Kirby- seems to hold a great reverence for time and a respect for its victims (as we all are).

While it does at times feel as if a Nurse With Wound record took itself way too seriously, The Caretaker strikes a fine line of dark conceptual music while being sonically approachable and accessible to a wider swath of people than NWW or other dark ambient works, for which Kirby should be commended.

Anyone who has seen Kubrick’s The Shining or a Jiri Barta film and thought ‘I want to go to there’ will revel in this album. Play it for them, or play it for yourself- It’s a worthwhile listen. Then you can always keep this record in the back of your mind, for when quaintness fades to black you’ll have a good record to recommend.

For fans of: Nurse With Wound, David Lynch, Arthur Fields

Like The Caretaker? Give these a listen: Music for Sleep, Lower Level Bureau, Slow Blink

REVIEW: Music For Sleep – Music From A Sinking World (2021)

Under the moniker Music For Sleep, artist Andrea Porcu’s 2021 release Music From A Sinking World is a beautiful and haunting work of melancholic tape loop ambience. Across seven vignettes or ‘short trajectories’ as music writer Peppe Trotta described it, Music From A Sinking World is like standing still in a cold marble gallery of a bombed out museum. The pieces themselves are distinctive and worthy of individual attention, yet contribute to the collective works’ melancholic and haunting potency.

The record is beautiful and haunting and everything else one could wish for in a masterful Ambient album. Originally recorded from March to October of 2020 and later recovered, each song on Music From A Sinking World takes a singular motif from an orchestral recording and amplifies subtle emotional qualities through a thick blanket of melancholia.

Acting like wind erosion on the listener’s perception of time, the work of Andrea Porcu feels at the behest of some greater current of the universe. Muddled melancholic loops spin like Ouroboros, bleeding out as reverb across any definitive point in the cycle. Andrea Porcu’s sculpting of tone and texture are beautiful, but it is the subversion of the listener’s perception of time, drenched in melancholy, which is the greatest takeaway of Music From A Sinking World.

Music is an art of movement, and so our perception of it is through the lens of time. How fitting is then that its end always sneaks up on the individual?

I really enjoyed Peppe Trotta’s description of this album, which is why I felt a need to quote them. “Brevi traiettorie” is just such a great way to describe the individual songs on Music From A Sinking World, so please go check out their review of the album on SoWhat Musica.

For fans of: Caretaker, William Basinski, Susumu Yokota

Like Music For Sleep? Give these a listen: Slow Blink, Brian J Davis, Robert Chamberlain