Many thanks to Justin of Roadside Picnic infamy for sending over a hulking package of goodies, among the contents the previously reviewed Roadside Picnic face off with Maurizio Bianchi via 4iB records….see elsewhere here…along with a copy of Wizards Tell Lies Matt Bower in his alternative Revenant Sea guise going toe to toe with the Roadside Picnic for an ultra limited cassette release via Jehu and Chinaman which came in a strict pressing of just 25 copies – and which until now – provided a gaping hole in our prized WTL collection (our copy in case your taking notes is #12/25). If you are wondering what all the fuss is about – then here’s that Revenant Sea Vs. Roadside Picnic critique reprised from Tales from the Attic XVII……more Wizardy stuff appearing soon….
Mentioned this at tales from the attic volume IX way back in February and since that time we’ve been manning the post box hoping one day a copy of it would manifest, and when the postman approached our hearts would skip as little, he’d reach into his sack and hand me a letter, I’d look mournfully at it, it was usually a bill, if it was something more interesting it’d more than likely be a miss delivery intended for a neighbour. We’d harrumphed and then retire disconsolately back inside preparing the next days marshalling of the mail box. Ho hum. As said we tracked this way back in February, a collaboration between the Revenant Sea – an extra curricula off shoot of Wizards Tell Lies – and Roadside Picnic – again an extra curricula off shoot this of Dream of Tall Buildings. Entitled ‘their words are lost in the din of jets’ and appearing in a limited cassette form – just 25 – via Jehu and Chinaman. Five tracks make up this apocalyptic suite, an ideal companion for revenant sea’s self titled cassette for auditory field theory earlier this year given it appears to deal with the same kind of nightmarish dystopian threat of mankind being subjected to some outer worldly horror. The template and mood is one of suffocating despair and heightened tension, haunting and harrowing the ominously titled ‘sterilization section’ opens the billing, electroid pulsars watchfully stand on sentry duty, to the rear the unsettling disconnected din of squalling babies and human groans, the detailing of sonic sub strata’s is controlled, deliberate and calculated in its paranoiac intent. The arrival of ‘the sum of these corridors’ lightens the mood but only slightly, a brutally telling epic of end of days proportions, ever darkening passages of apocalyptic heralds eclipse the skies, to the euphoric showers of celestial sun bursts, the salvation is savage, and then there is nothing. More attuned to the grim foreboding that stirs from the shadow steeled grooves of Wizards Tell Lies, radio static, white noise interference and leviathan groans greet the dead headed wasteland that is ‘with the myriad’ from a point of cold withering silence something slowly rises from the dread attaining mass, definition and form. Which leaves both ‘in the light of the burning car’ and ‘before he could breathe a world’ to run matters out to a grim recurring nightmarish conclusion to the sound of droning insectoid clicks all embellished with the kind of skin prickling unease that behind the sofa hiding won’t cure believe you me I’ve tried. http://www.jehuandchinaman.bandcamp.com/album/their-words-are-lost-in-the-din-of-jets
the sunday experience 