Fórn – “Weltschmerz” • Gilead Media // EP
Doom
Since I got the chance to listen to “The Departure Of Consciousness” a year ago, I’ve been saying to all my friends and acquaintances that Fórn is pound for pound the best doom-sludge band out there these days. I’m absolutely comfortable with this, as their regime of employing low-end tactics combined with astute melody is just soul-wrenching, narrating depression in a way few can and portraying exactly what the German word Weltschmerz, coined by Jean Paul Richter, means: world-weariness. It is a work of longing, of contemplating finitude and an essential construction for those who have in Thou a reliable source of gloom. The icing on the cake is their use of the Portuguese word “Saudade” to title 50% of this EP. Sad is beautiful. [PS]
Lucrecia Dalt – “Ou” • Care Of
Ambient | Electronics | Experimental
With each record, the Berlin-based Colombian songwriter is turning herself into an expertise of sound manipulation, detonating pleated micro-cuts of deconstruction and being promptly hostile to anything that slightly resembles normality. She could just try the lowest common denominator of picking up an acoustic guitar and channel Liz Harris’ boundaries, but Lucrecia Dalt is much more interested in unfossilizing the sound of future, tribal and plenty apt as well to explore cosmo-techniques as a Pierre-Simon Laplace of 2015. She is special. [EP]
Mára – “Surfacing” • SIGE Records
Dream pop | Ambient
While we’re waiting for the newest Mamiffer full-length, Faith Coloccia unexpectedly presents Mára, her solo effort. Mediative as you would expect, it marks an artistic reencounter with straight-forward melody using unpretentious piano chords as its embryology. A lovely record for those who will always rank wintry desolation above summer exhibitionism, there’s a poppy touch in this as well, sealing “Surfacing” as your most perfect tea-drinking companion. [EP]
Whatever Brains – “Whatever Brains” (4th LP) • Sorry State
Experimental | Something To Fuck Your Brain With
So, yes, good riddance, Whatever Brains. I’ve heard this is your last record, so thanks for all the vomit-inducing music, as if I didn’t do enough drugs already day in day out. I always loved your stuff and this one is also, wait for it, ah, a no-brainer. Only if I could snort the vinyl up my needy nostrils. [GMC]
Yellow Eyes – “Sick With Bloom” • Gilead Media
Black Metal
Pardon me, let me fucking chime in on this one if I might, because I’ve been waiting for it for lord knows how long really. Being myself a Jew I just wanted to spout off this figure of a mohel specialized in the act of Metzitzah b’peh – oral suction of the circumcision wound:
“The mohel brings the baby’s organ into his mouth immediately after the excision of the foreskin and sucks blood from it vigorously. This action lowers the internal pressure in the tissues of the organ, in the blood vessels of the head of the organ and in the exposed ends of the arterioles that have just been cut. Thus, the difference between the pressure in the blood vessels in the base of the organ and the pressure in the blood vessels at its tip is increased. This requirement has deep religious significance as well as medical benefits.”
Medical benefits such as herpes. And one more reason to hate us. Well, I was a bit conscious of this already, but I’ve spent these last couple of days reading some old family books that I have about Judaism while listening to “Sick With Bloom”. Turns out the record fits surprisingly well with ghoulish ancient Jewish practicalities, giving its crude atmosphere, the bucolic-naturalistic auguries which resemble an old age epoch of sanctified violence, tremolo picking occultism to hypno-anesthetize before an archaic medical intervention, field-recording woods’ spirituality and wilderness. I want to be circumcised again. [GMC]