VOLTIGEURS 'Carrion' LP

Started by Pete Johnstone, October 05, 2012, 03:56:14 PM

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Pete Johnstone

VOLTIGEURS 'Carrion' LP out now on Second Layer Records.



First LP on Second Layer and also the first full-length LP from Voltigeurs: the duo of Matthew Bower and Samantha Davies. Absolute mastery of anaolg distortion, used to great ritualistic effect. Densely layered walls of guitar, synth and piano. Gold on black print sleeves. Limited to 350 copies.


Reviews:-


"Major new release for the duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof et al) and Samantha Davies in an edition of 350 copies: this is massively destructive twin guitar claustrophobia, with deep bass sonorities and a liquid metal spine under a hailstorm of raggedy avant classical guitar fuzz. In many ways Carrion comes over as the negative equivalent of Japanese psych monsters Mainliner's classic Mellow Out, with a muzzy bass-deformed production style that sees rock music reduced to inchoate shadows populated by the ghost of electricity. The opening track sounds closer to an electric storm than post-Hendrix string-wrassling while "Iron Vulture" sounds like a fleet of fighter aircraft hovering somewhere over the channel accompanied by Philip Corner on destructo piano. Over on the flip the sounds get a little more Industrial, coming over like a song cycle scored for the sonic emissions of power stations, generators, pylons and huge rusty silos. Easily one of the most bloody-minded and radically deconstructed 'rock' records of Bower's career, pushing past his recent interest in black metal into a zone of total electronic communion. Highly recommended." - Volcanic Tongue.


"As soon as I put the needle down on this one my first thought was "sounds like Skullflower". It came as no surprise, therefore, for me to drift over to its press release and disover that - lo and behold - it's Skullflower. Or at least it's a duo of Matthew Bower and Samantha Davies so, like, Skullflower & friend, basically, doling out some horrible oppressive New Blockaders-with-guitars style noise terrorism.
What's happening is that a guitar is farting out a load of feedback and distortion and these two aren't even doing anything to stop it. In fact they're encouraging it if anything. There's no real riffs or tunes to speak of, it's very much in the pure noise style. The first song has two guitars churning away horribly alongside one another, and in the second we are introduced to the sound of an irritating piano along with loads of creaking, groaning feedbacky dirge.
Flip it and there's one with loads of shrieking feedback that'll really annoy your neighbours, and then more crunching and grumbling on the final track. A dancefloor-emptying, pants-dirtying experience throughout."
- Norman Records.


"While the last few Voltigeurs records found the duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Hototogisu, Sunroof!, etc.) and Samantha Davies (Skullflower) in a distinctly black metal direction, this new lp see the BM pushed way into the background, the sound here much more of a guitarnoise record, albeit with some black buzz lurking below the surface.
Four extended tracks, the opener titled "Morning Raga", but that title is a bit misleading, as the sound is less raga, and more a dense cloud of caustic grinding guitars, buried synths and unrecognizable piano, woven into billowing swirls of crumbling caustic distortion, shot through with shards of rib cage rattling low end and underpinned by a roiling sea of tangled melodic squiggles, barely audible over the din above. The second track reimagines the same sound as a more murky buzzy industrial framework, weirdly and subtly rhythmic, again buried beneath and avalanche of grinding, crumbling heaviness, but again, this is not simply a wall of guitars (and synths), within this noisy onslaught lurks all manner of weird droned out buzz and strange spidery melodies, all of which seem to ooze from Voltigeurs' blacknoise murk.
The flipside begins with a heaving landscape of metallic buzz, and an undulating low end rumble, all smoothed out into something more droney, and downright hypnotic, strangely cinematic in its own way, still noisy and abrasive, but haunting and harrowing, laced with keening minor key melodies, and infused with mysterious electronics (or something that sounds like electronics). The final track dials back the noise a bit, and sculpts what's left into a minimal sprawl of crumbling static, this time, there seems to be some black metal buzz churning away underneath, but so low in the mix as to be just another layer of buzzing thrum, the sound here reverby and cavernous, the aforementioned black metal elements distant and abstract, all swirling behind a gristly wall of grinding high end hiss, and weirdly glitchy hum, again transforming abstract guitarnoise/synthnoise into a mesmerizing slab of droned out mesmer."
Aquarius Records.


Paypal: info AT secondlayer DOT co DOT uk
UK £17 PPD; EU/ROW £20 PPD. Please mark 'Carrion' in the subject line.


Volcanic Tongue (UK), Norman (UK), Metamkine (FR), Release The Bats! (SE), Tochnit Aleph (GER), Turgid Animal (UK), RRR (US), either have copies now or will have copies very soon.


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