Blackcloudsummoner - Spend the Night.

Blackcloudsummoner – Spend the Night – Live 2019-2022- Download – 2022.

https://blackcloudsummoner.bandcamp.com/album/spend-the-night-live-2019-2022

      1.       HYPERION IN REVERSE (LIVE @JT SOAR 16TH JAN 2020)

      2.       WHEEZING JUNK (LIVE AT CENTRALA 11 JUNE 2021)

      3.       LOVE SONG (LIVE AT THE AUXILIARY 23RD JULY 2021)

      4.       FOLD YOUR BLOOD IN HALF (LIVE AT THE CHAMELEON 6TH MARCH 2022)

I am driving Blackcloudsummoner and Itching to a gig at Birmingham Centrala 11^th June 2021, we reach the city centre of Birmingham.

Me – ‘Guys the sky is looking very cloudy today.’

Blackcloudsummoner – ‘Come on lads, get back in the box you’re out too early!”

One of our beloved Nottingham’s lead noise projects is Blackcloudsummoner, along with Itching, there is no posturing or hype, only the delivery on recordings and live performances. Whenever I see the steel dragon on the outskirts of the city centre, I can’t help but think of the project and how much I love the work. I don’t know where he came from, suddenly he was there, playing gigs, doing his own zines and releases. The recent coming out of Blackcloudsummoner as a queer project has been epic and straight to the point. Photos in lingerie straight out online declarations of Queerness, no build up, no hints, again, it just happened. I fully support this and fully endorse the greatness of the project live and on record as you can see from past reviews. Spend the Night consists of four live performances across 4 years, I think I was at 2 of them.

The first recorded performance is from JT Soar in Nottingham – Hyperion in Reverse. This has that weird Blackcloudsummoner sound that uses quirky sounds that sound like nothing else. It indicates how the project seems to influence and inform itself, it has an awareness of its surroundings and contemporaries, but any influence (if it exists) is stripped down to what suits the project and keeps it self-protected whilst expanding upon what it does. The noise and the occult factors of the project get stranger the more you look at them. If I am honest analysing the work of the project only builds up more questions.  I’d describe the sound as startling, it feels as if it is grabbing sunlight, mangling it into a different shape and throwing it back out to the listener.

Recorded nearly a year and a half later as gigs gradually returned after lockdown, Wheezing Junk interrupts the audience’s conversation aggressively, it coughs at them and begins to converse within itself, simultaneously projecting outwards at the same time.  The sound has an immediately more noticeable bad mood to it, a sullen sound, not happy, no rays of sunshine bounced around in different forms. I say that, yet a playfulness does enter the sound later in the performance, but it is way screwier than the previous performance. It is like someone simultaneously being playful and threatening at the same time. This evolves into throbbing hostility, not an explosion but the sound pulls back, slows down and drags into a restrained sonic tantrum.

Hot on the heels of the Centrala performance comes Love Song, how it interrupts the audience uses a lot more aggression than before, it throws screeching jolts and contact mic abuse. Both elements increase what they do to multiply their effect until the sounds howl out, launching outwards off the distortion. I’d describe this as Harsh Noise’s wierdo one off cousin, locked within the explosive conversation of their own sound. Love Song is way Joltier than previous performances, cutting off and starting out in new directions a lot. The screwed up playful sound returns later in the set, it bends and reshapes the light, there is less menace here only a fuller redelivery. It says, “look at me, I am going off, freaking out, nobody else does it this way so soak it in!” This moment is everything beautiful about the work of the project raining over the audience, even the long collapse of the sound is perfect.

Eight months later, four months ago, Fold Your Blood in Half happens at Chameleon in Nottingham. This one has a quiet start, the intro is subtle, the sound tries different things, each performance does this, but this one does it more so. There is a lot of drag to the sound, it scrapes a lot, the contact microphone sounds really emphasise this. It isn’t aggressive, here we have a depressive, blacker sound for sure. Feedback is left wailing for longer until other noise joins in, the atmospheres roll out for long periods of time. The project has clearly retained its one-off qualities whilst going elsewhere. The work of the project is done with a less busy palette, everything is subtle. I like the sudden leap forwards, progression never stops. The clouds came out at just the right time on this day.

Beautiful work, the performances all differ from each other, the development of the work is consistent and never loses its individuality. Well worthy of purchase.

Army of one, eradicator of all scene cliques 2022.