Album: The Blue Boar
Artist: Lavatone
Label: Kalamine Records
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Monolith
2. The
Blue Boar
3. Empty
Room
4. Shelter
in Place
I’ve only heard Lavatone
once before and that was only a single track on Kalamine Records’ Inside/Beside 3 compilation which came
out some months ago. And now along comes a four-track album from this Texan one-man
drone outfit, allowing me to get a deeper feel for his music and his
sensibilities. And, of course, allowing me to see whether this so far extremely
interesting and quality French netlabel has yet again released a winner.
‘Monolith’, at eight
minutes or so the shortest of the tracks on here, pretty much hits the ground
running with a rasping and grinding bass tone which provides a vehicle for
hornlike drones, a fanfare blaring from the verandas of some vast edifice, huge
braziers ablaze at either end sending columns of scented smoke skyward. Imagine
a kind of ziggurat towering into the heavens, flanked by endless sets of steps
all leading to a temple structure at its top. The mass of stone is enough to
intimidate by itself, let alone the sheer size of the building. A slow steady
pounding beat measures out the pulse of proceedings, a sonorous affair, a
ritual of sacrifice and perhaps appeasement. A lowering grey cloudscape only
adds to the feeling of oppressive intimidation, a weight that bows the
shoulders of all who stand or kneel at its feet.
The album’s title track
cues up next, howling winds and ringing reverberant tones winging their way in
from somewhere far off, a mass of denseness floating in the sky to block the
sun and its warming rays. It feels like a glowering presence up there, a
sentient ‘thing’ observing all that happens below, a god-like entity judging
everyone and everything. Snarling feedback and guttural growls radiate its
inherent malignity, a solid slab of hatred and malice given actual form. Its
baleful influence and searching stare are physical qualities, designed to be
threatening and to serve as a warning: do not step out of line or act against what
we think is right.
‘Empty Room’ delineates a
truly cavernous space, beginning with an atonal screech of strings that’s
immediately followed by a deeply growling hurricane of drone and howls, as if
the very bowels of the earth are letting rip, screaming out its antipathy and
animus against those who have claimed the surface as their kingdom by rights.
These battering groans swirl and coil, reaching out to fill every available
inch of space in the subterrestrial caverns, only to be amplified by the
echoing stone itself and accumulate into a bestial bellowing of enormous
proportions. Accompanying the grumbles and roars are smaller creatures,
snarling and grunting in empathy. The slow heartbeat and pulsing of the earth
itself is the metronome to this blasting symphony, a cacophonic and searing jet
of antagonistic complaint.
Finally, ‘Shelter in
Place’ marks the end of the album, and its ambience is much calmer and less
calamitous – indeed, I would even go so far as to say that, at least initially,
it’s a quietly soporific wash of soothing waves, a hymnal floating serenely
somewhere in the mid-atmosphere. Gradually, though, antipathetic elements
encroach upon its blissful shores, introducing some grainier and insalubrious
notes, generating a sense of thrilling alarm. But soon enough it seems that
equilibrium is restored, and whatever black clouds started to appear on the
horizon have dissolved and disappeared, and we are once again treated to
exquisite harmonics, slightly distorted but that only makes them all the
sweeter for that.
I find myself having to
say that yet again Kalamine have released another high quality album, one that
should satisfy any ardent drone fan out there. The Blue Boar is one of those recordings that make it all look so
easy, but also making us aware on a careful listen that that definitely isn’t
the case: it sounds complicated because it’s carefully layered, using the
simplest of ingredients and elements. It comes down to how this brew is put together that makes it as good as it is –
there are no unnecessary additions or adornments, just the absolute minimum
needed to create the moods and ambiences. It always makes me think just how
intimate musicians must need to be with the nature of sound and its properties
in order to produce such finely attuned sonic tapestries. Lavatone has
definitely mastered the intricacies of sound judging by this, as a consequence
crafting a grandiose weft and warp of subterranean and elevated ambient
aesthetics simultaneously. Excellent stuff!
Available as a download
from the Kalamine Records Bandcamp page:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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