Beta-Lactam Ring Rec.
Volcano the Bear : Amidst The Noise and Twigs (UK,2007)****
CD’s that look like little artwork books, like this one -at least for the first 1000 copies only-, they are much more attractive compared to the plastic waste packages which are ironically enough called “jewel” cases. Since the description mentioned this "embraces the standards of Comus, 3 Hurel, early Residents and 12th century Arabo-Andalusian music, with partly some folk psych experimentalism full of “acidic harvest ballads that noisily well up into proto-Kraut thrums and tribal night trips around the pyre…” and further on…“…like a recently discovered field recording of some obscure Celtic clan who accidentally stumbled onto psychedelia 600 years ahead of its time” this has all the words and descriptions to tickle all my curiosity. I knew already how much I liked the group before, especially with some of the more compact results, so there was nothing that could stop me from trying this album, except that the Pound exchange rate can make UK albums rather expensive.
And this is Volcano The Bear again at their best, sounding as if this is developed from deeply experienced ritual inspirations, with just that little amount of weird, disharmonic sounds or chords that distort the mind to that degree this becomes like a trance-inducer on its own, while the music, partly uncontrolled continues, inspired from higher controls of through instinctive pulses regulated automatisms, creates its own new-ethnic evolution patterns, as if it unfolds and shapes the folk music of a new minority. With all the energy of a young group, this also has the experience of a long time resident of weird worlds finding beauty and energy from within each obsessive strange attraction.
The music is mostly acoustic, and is very arranged with lots of instruments, with strings like guitar-like instruments like banjo, bouzouki, guitar and cello, but also flutes, clarinet or trumpet, instruments with droning strings, hand percussive instruments, and vocals (and beautiful vocal arrangements) for the song and ritualistic leads, and with just a handful of parts with some noise and distortion deformations, and of course additional sounds from casual objects that create fitting harmonies. I heard one more free cosmo-ethno-jazz improvisation, and the last track also is a longer improvisation. Brilliant stuff.
I hope in future the label will release similar book-like cds. This looks beautiful.
