A 90s Pair

Many apologies for my extreme tardiness with this blog I love so much. I promise more consistent posting once school starts and life takes on a little more structure. That said, if you're reading, PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS. Now, with no further ado, I'm gonna try to win you back with the two birds, one post approach...

Tried and true, a Canadian classic. Forever Again is a collection of lo-fi atmospheres, unresolved and vague tales from the heart and hooky, minimal, bedroom dream punk anthems. Without totally evident conceptual continuity linking the songs, Eric's Trip managed to meld and define a radical new aesthetic with this record. In a decade that, like the 80s, has become known for excessive and tastelessly BIG production values, these mopey 20-somethings managed to capture their message in their medium. The intimacy and vulnerability of the lyrical content is reflected in the recording: the calm of almost inaudible field sounds, acoustic guitar and voice close miked in a soundproofed basement and drums distant and small in the mix. The subtle use of basic tape effects and reverb adds to the comforting claustrophobia and wintry effect the album has. Eric's Trip's career-long boycott of guitar compression sums up their sentiment towards the state of record production in their time: if wasn't broke when you put it to tape, why fix it?

Let Go 

Deeply destructive and strange, Nattens Madrigal (trans: Madrigal of the Night) is, for me, arguably the best Norwegian Black Metal release of the 90s. The no bullshit performance and necro production, the dense harmonic textures, virtuosic guitaring and a balance of acoustic folk and minimalist electronic interludes make for a thoroughly immersing sonic barrage. One must question the devotion of the extreme metal underground to harsh sound when seeing how mixed the reviews of an outright masterpiece as this are. The myth goes that the gnostic gents of Ulver spent their entire production budget on Gucci suits and substances and then recorded this on a four-track in a forest. While this little romance adds to the mystique of the record and is probably at least half true, a very professional mixing and mastering job is evident and most likely cost more money than is perceived to have been spent. However, it is the popular rumour that gets cited most as reasoning for a lack of appreciation for the sound of this album, even by Ulver fans. The reality is that much of the Black Metal community are completely unwilling to hear artists with original approaches to the aesthetic and dismiss these as ineffective outings. But even through the unrelenting aural attack the genius at work here is painfully audible.

Alone & lost 

The common denominator here is strong material presented in a DIY manner through user friendly four-track tape porta-studios, which were in abundance by the mid-90s. Both the artists here evaded the oppressive commercialization of sound engineering in their decade and crafted albums with impressively well-defined sonic personalities. I think Marshall McLuan would have appreciated these excellent records.