This time the album reviews page has the exceptional collab record from Galician drone/ambient duo trajedesaliva and Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter and pianist Maud the moth. Senestra recreating in sound the experience of the now notoriuos Stanford Prison Experiment. The emotional and brilliant Yr Poetry, a pop punk* band featuring Alexei from Johnny Foreigner, itoldyouiwouldeatyou and Yr Fr and the Italian Fuzzy stoner/garage punk group Loose Sutures.
Maud the Moth & trajedesaliva – Bordando el manto terrestre
Time Released Sound and Woodford Halse
This album is a musical journey around the figure of Remedios Varo, a Spanish born artist who lived in exile in Mexico until her death. It’s created by the Galician dark ambient project trajedesaliva (Mon Ninguén & unavena) and Madrid-born singer and pianist Maud the Moth (Amaya López-Carromero).
There are three parts to the album, to reflect the three stages of Remedios’ life. They translate to exile, transfiguration and harmony and the music in each section reflects that. The first third is built on drones and sadness, operatic singing and spoken storytelling. Ethereal and strongly spiritual, it’s an emotionally charged journey. The final part of this section edges towards an ancient folk sound as she starts to change and accept what has happened.
The second section is more uplifting and hopeful, an open sky filling church organ sound and a wave pattern of synths, feeling like staring out of an open window as you slowly fall asleep. It also has the narration of the story.
The last harmonic section is just that, light and beautiful, calm and dreamlike, it’s lovely.
An amazing musical achievement by two wonderful artists.
Senestra – Stanford
Fourth Dimension/Adventures in Reality/Opiumdenpluto
The second album on this page based on real events. Senestra have made an album based on the notorious Stanford Prison social experiment. Briefly, students were recruited for an experiment and were given roles as either prisoners or guards in a makeshift prison area. It was supposed to last for two weeks monitoring the participants’ reactions and behaviour. It lasted for six days and was ended because of the brutal psychological abuse by the guards of the prisoners. There’s an enormous amount of material on this event so that really is a brief summary. But you get the gist.
The music, as you would expect, is dark, dank and all enclosing, morse code is tapped out over one track signalling SOS repeatedly, it gets more and more menacing. The drones and synths that create most of the sound are low, nasty and relentless. The use of jarring static and atmospheric sounds add to the feeling of isolation and confusion.
It works through the six days of the experiment with vocal samples snatched and placed under the music, it’s not an easy listen by any means.
The last track has silence for nine minutes then throbbing synths like helicopter blades and undecipherable voices under noise of menace all over it.
It’s effective and essential listening.
Yr Poetry – Yr Poetry Ruin Music
I’m pretty sure we saw Yr Poetry for the first time at a Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam gig. In fact I think they share the same drummer, but I could be wrong. Everytime I see Yr Poetry written I say it in my head with a broad Irish accent as my ex mother in law from Belfast would say.
There are a lot of words here and I’m going to have to listen to it a great many times to get them all but even the snatches you get are perfect. The songs are sung, spoken and shouted in a beautiful sounding Irish accent. They are played on keyboards, drums and guitar, and they are quite wonderful.
It’s poetry, storytelling, songwriting, call it what you want, but when this is turned up as loud as it goes and you’ve drunk, taken, eaten, kissed whatever makes you happy it’s bloody perfect. I think this is the sort of thing I would have lost my mind to as a teenager, and as an old bastard I’m gushing about it anyway.
It’s punky, indie, groovy desperate and lost, frantic and delirious
Loose Sutures – Sado Sex for Dummies
Electric Valley Records
Daft reactive band name, check. Liberal baiting album title, check. Obligatory rock scuzz god guest star, check. Brilliant blues based punk fueled rock’n’roll from the school of Motorhead and ZZ Top fueled by huge amounts of illicit pharmaceuticals and broken motorcycle parts, check.
Right, this album is a blast, a drug addled biker party with guitars. It’s stupidly addictive and just a huge laugh. I’d see these live and leap around like a maniac with everyone else. It’s life affirming in it’s glorious simplicity and to finish you get both psychotic psychedelia and a despair ridden biker blues epic.
Just listen to the fucking thing, really, it’s ace.
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Maud the Moth & trajedesaliva have a Bandcamp page
Maud the Moth is on Facebook, Bandcamp and Tweets as @maudthemoth.
trajedesaliva is on Bandcamp, Facebook and Instagram.
Senestra have a Bandcamp page.
Yr Poetry are on Facebook, Bandcamp and Tweet as @YrPoetry.
Loose Sutures are on Bandcamp, Instagram and Facebook.
All words by Adrian Bloxham.
