Artist: Phantoms vs. Fire
Label: Blackjack Illuminist Records
Catalogue no: BIR053
Tracklist:
1. D
des i gn er Offf Nightm ma res s
2. In
Love with a Glitch
3.
Arrival
4.
As the Ashes Touch my Skin
5. Burning Burning
6.
Broken Innocence
7.
My Mind as your Amusement Park
8.
Pink Balloon Dog Animal Skull Hacker
9.
Otherworld Cacophony
10. Believe
in the Fire (The Chanting)
Regular attendees of my
reviews might have cottoned on to the fact that occasionally I like to visit the
fringes of even the outermost margins of the underground, and to fire off
despatches from places a long way from familiar paths. Thiago Desant’s Phantoms
vs. Fire project is one such, and it’s apparent that things are done
differently here: rather than exploring the wonders of the macrocosm, even if
just in the imagination, this feels more like a gazetteer of the inner worlds,
a Lonely Planets guide if you like, a handbook describing the rare,
scintillating gems of the microcosmic realms which hide in the regions less
travelled. It is everything an inner Livingstone would want: a multi-textural,
variegated, passionate, psychedelic, and mind-enhancing vision-quest, a journey
through rarified atmospheres and exotic essences that are simultaneously
ephemeral and bright, diffuse and solid, spiritual and material.
This is deeply ambient, experimental,
abstract, at times disjointed, elusive, indefinable, uncategorisable,
minimalist and yet densely layered. It’s a dive into a mind where invention is
forever unfolding and flowering, where colours with no names burst and bubble,
texturally complex, musically staggering, and as full of imagination and
creativity and as broad as the span of the universe itself. In some respects
these are presented to us as brief sketches, flying visits to the wellsprings
of creation and generation, merely mapping out the generalities and only
existing to outline the shapes and forms. It’s a shout-out to divergence and
diversity, to bifurcation and speciation, to adaptation and specialisation.
This is the heartbeat of the universe, its raison d’être, its meaning and
purpose.
The inventive breadth
showcased here precludes me from inventorying each individual piece, so a few
tracks will suffice to delineate the tenor of this release. Track one, the
troublesomely-titled ‘D des i gn er Offf Nightm ma res s’ (yes, that’s what’s
written here) is a gentle and endless exhalation, a breath seen on a cold
morning, before a pulsing escalation warms it up and sends it shivering upwards
into the diffuse and rare atmospheric heights. ‘In Love with a Glitch’ is a
mournful, clangorous lament, perhaps the wail of a bird singing its last song
to the glittering stars before gliding back to Earth, never to fly again. ‘As
the Ashes Touch my Skin’ is a forsaken landscape, blighted by gloom and dark
obscuring winds; even here though, something survives, fluting out its defiance
to all those who would hear, a shimmering light of hope in an otherwise sullied
world. The title track, ‘My Mind as your Amusement Park’, is a beautifully
lilting and reverberating refrain, a mysterious masked carnival of wonders and
oddities, dancing, pirouetting, tumbling, and somersaulting. ‘Believe in the
Fire (The Chanting)’ is a raucous dance/ritual celebrated under a starlit sky
in the protective shade of rainforest trees, the orange glow of a flickering
fire picking out faces, bodies, and action, the celebrants abandoning
themselves to their own rhythms.
Sketches though these may
ultimately be, there’s sufficient energy, movement, colour, texture, and detail
to grace us with the full picture. This is almost like ‘planet-hopping’,
sampling and savouring each stop briefly before jetting off again before the
experience gets too thin and tired. I would also point out an enervating
freshness here, that nothing outstays its welcome – it’s akin to the work of a
great writer: deft use of materials to provide description and flavour without
unnecessary flourishes and overextensions, and brevity. In some ways it reminds
me of some the old Editions EG releases from way back: snippets of events,
places, and feelings rather than full expurgatory essays. If you’re in the mood
for something lighter, varied, fresh, wild, colourful, and full of flow and
dynamism, then I suggest you give this a try.
Available in a multitude
of versions and variations from here:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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