Ducks Battle Satan

Chimarendammerung is basically a drone record. A very busy, noisy drone record but a drone record none the less. Hototogisu is a duo of  Matthew Bowers when he’s not playing in either Sunroof! or Skullflower and  Double Leopard’s Marcia Bassett. If you know Matt Bower’s other work you know what your going to get basically improvised noise jams filled with feedback  and other tricks of the trade. The din created on this record is pretty powerful and the first time I played it I was pretty underwelmed. I had a chance to concentrate later and it was only then that the full palate of the tracks was revealed. The metal-infused, guitar-based drone is flecked with other noise and instruments the most readily discernable being a bow being used on some type of string instrument. But this never quite reaches the  transcendent  beauty of Burning Star Core – Hototogisu play a much more visceral form of drone. I like this record more than the other Hototoguisu record I own, Some Blood Will Stick and I thought that was pretty good. Although that record was a much more claustrophobic and darker set of tracks,  it’s not like Chimarendammerung lets the light in. The sounds used are merely different and it doesn’t come close to creating the same mood of Some Blood… which had some genuinely creepy moments. In all there are five Untitled tracks. I particularly liked the second one especially in the  final third where a vaguely doomy lost souls effect bubbled to the  surface every now and then but for most of time the enjoyment in this record is the slight shifts in tone and variation as the tracks progress. I’m more of a fan of Skullflower and Double Leopards than this band but every now and then I give it a listen when I’m in that whole white noise coming through headphones kind of mood. If you watch the short clip I’ve included, they manage to achieve that whole transcendence through noise thing yet on this record that might give it a red hot go but they never quite get there.

This entry was posted on September 19, 2009 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Double Leopards, hototogisu, Music, noise, Skullflower, Sunroof!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.