#threads;echo mcdowell

[gypsybelladonna]

connection: love interest -- early dating stage...

muse: Echo Mcdowell x Ivy Mckenna

@legendaryl0stpieces

"You have no idea how happy I am to see you!" Echo's voice came from down the hallway, as she barreled towards Ivy to wrap arms around her and squeeze her tightly. It had been over a month since she'd been able to see her last; they'd been dating for four months already and it was hard to believe it had only been four months. Though that little bit over a month of not being able to see her because she'd had to go take care of family matters with her father and siblings.

They had needed her there for some decisions that involved her and it took her quite a while before she could get back to her. Echo was excited to see her again, nuzzling her nose into her neck and pressing a kiss to it, before pulling her head up to look at her. "Hi there." she said softly, barely a whisper as she leaned her forehead against hers for a moment before lifting her forehead to look at her for a moment with a small smile.

[thepitglasgow]

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA - A BLACK MILE TO THE SURFACE

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA HERALD IN A NEW ERA AND JUSTIFY THEIR GOOD NAME WITH A COMPLEX AND STUNNINGLY VISCERAL LOOK INTO PARENTHOOD AND RELIGION.   

Andy Hull is the son of a pastor — he’s also now a father himself. In amongst sub-narratives of self-destruction, repetition and the elusive religion which haunts his art like a spectre, A Black Mile To The Surface is an album about family. More so, about parenthood. 

Opening track, The Maze, is a not so subtle mission statement for anyone aware of Hull’s young daughter’s name. Mayzie is ever present in the steady heartbeat of bassy piano and kick drum; the reverence Hull has for her symbolised in his church-like backing choir. Worship and fatherhood are inextricably linked, and though it’s initially presented in a positive light, their connection is far more profound. 

In the context of these people as characters at least, the relationship between Mayzie’s parents’ is troubled. Refracted through heart attacks and the collapse of a gold mine both The Gold and The Moth tackle helplessness in the face of a failing bond: ‘You don’t open your eyes for a while / you just breathe that moment down’. One approaches with warm, sloping guitar and stark choruses; the other in a discordant crescendo of voices and oppressive background mutters. The tension they build leading into one of the record’s absolute standouts is palpable. 

Lead, SD is the inevitable explosion, part one of a narrative surrounding a mass-murder suicide in a grocery.. A razor sharp riff, bursts of momentum and the cold silence in between to draw focus to Hull’s meticulously controlled voice.     MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA are a band well-tethered to their roots in the deep south, and the stagnation of their home is just as much a part of the story as anything: every year the same, the snow, the mental break, ‘and it’s been that way for eternity’. Hull asks over and over for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage, he repents and repeats his sins and nothing ever changes. Doomed to repeat his father’s mistakes. 

The rest of the tale is fractured despite its seamless transitions, split up by a sweet, folky love song and a separate self-inflicted car crash. The Alien is soft and distant, non-judgemental even as its protagonist hurts those around him in his turmoil. Echo carries Hulls’ vocals up and over lead guitarist Robert McDowell’s easy plucking, and the building layers give it an otherworldly quality which carries through the rest of the record.  

When we do finally return to The Grocery it’s from the shooters perspective, and then that of a pregnant woman’s in The Wolf as she’s caught in the crossfire. The climax of the narrative centerpiece is almost exultant in its certainty as cymbals crash and the final words, ‘this is the only way’, ring out into nothing. Determination in the pounding of The Wolf’s drums. 

Each account is discrete on the surface — but all are connected by the same threads of self-destruction; of collateral damage; the tie between religion, birth and death. It’s a heavy selection of themes, skillfully and personally considered by a man come to terms with his new place in life.    

And come to terms he has, for all the suffering A Black Mile To The Surface explores, it ends in two more love songs. The Parts, a vulnerable solo guitar track that follows the growth of his relationship with his wife, and The Silence. The record comes to a close with all the paternal feeling an indie band have to offer. Escalating, moving, vast. 

‘There is nothing I’ve got when I die that I keep’ submits Hull in The Maze, cries again in The Wolf, but he amends it now: ‘There is nothing you keep / there is only your reflection’. Regardless of ancestral curse or ‘darkness and agony’, he vows to end the repetition that haunts him. And in doing so, a new era begins.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

[gypsybelladonna]

tag drop for echo mcdowell

[dustedmagazine]

Richard Pinhas — Reverse (Bureau B)

In its time-heals-all-wounds way, retrospect has reduced Richard Pinhas’s 1982-1992 recording hiatus to a footnote in his long career, the 10-year gap nestled harmlessly as it is between Heldon’s pioneering electronic space-rock on one side and an abundance of fresh solo and collaborative projects on the other. Scarier to think that we almost lost the French guitarist again more recently, after the insult dealt by a cosmic middle finger — two deaths and a breakup, for starters—had Pinhas calling his latest record @Last to mark his final departure from music-making. This time, fortunately, he underwent a change of heart before going over the precipice, making Reverse an apt new title.  

Forged under these conditions, it’s no surprise that Pinhas’s Bureau B debut bears equal markers of doom and redemption — or at least that the album can sustain such a reading. Without straying from the layered, massy soundscapes that characterize his recent work, Pinhas and company fashion a suite of noisy “Dronz” that aren’t so much harsh as awesome, in the primary sense of the word: fearful but full of wonder, towering with the impersonality of an impending natural disaster. On its own, Pinhas’s mastery of loops, electronics and effects can brew up an impressive sound; toss in big voices like Oren Ambarchi and Masami Akita (Merzbow) — alongside strong performances from bassist Florian Tatar, drummer Arthur Narcy, esteemed percussionist William Winant and Pinhas’s son Duncan on digital synths — and you’re talking about some complex, at times forbiddingly dense, music. The textural richness echoes some of the uncertainty (not to say paranoia) that Pinhas was experiencing while producing the album: Is that a guitar or a synth? What’s that, deep in the left channel? Is someone articulating a rhythm or is that my ears ringing? In short: Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing? Yet after 16, or 7, or 15, or 11 minutes, each of Reverse’s four tracks ends in a calming de-escalation, the storm retreating and clarity — if not order — momentarily restored.  

While from a distance Reverse’s four “Dronz” (each numbered and subtitled) seem to use the same basic tools to create the same basic results, closer listening reveals the subtleties that make each track its own. The easiest detail to isolate is Narcy’s drum-work, which cuts through the electronic haze and helps sketch the rise and fall of each track’s dramatic arc — not unlike Tatsuya Yoshida’s playing on Pinhas’s 2016 Process and Reality or Joe Talia’s on Tikkun from 2014. On the opening “Ketter,” for example, atmospheric cymbals gradually ossify into a sturdy 6/8 backbone before splintering up again on the other side. On “End” — pointedly positioned second, not last — Narcy’s weirdly shuffling upbeat groove seems at odds with the wasteland drones it accompanies, almost taunting. And on the closing “V2,” the drummer helps shape the sound by refraining altogether.  

Pinpointing the individual contributions of the other musicians can be tricky, as can locating the boundaries between players —even if the album was recorded a layer at a time and pieced together later, with Pinhas and Ambarchi setting down initial guitar parts in Paris before adding in Merzbow in Tokyo and Winant in Oakland. Sure, there are moments where you can be certain you’re hearing Pinhas’s patented post-Frippertronics or Ambarchi’s electrocuted shredding. Winant’s pitch-bending timpani emerge clearly at the end of “Ketter,” and sludgy synth sounds dominate “Nefesh.” But it’s the melding that matters, the effect produced, more than the means. Sympathetic backstory aside, Pinhas’s ability on Reverse to tie his own and his band mates’ threads into a single super-strong knot bespeaks not only mastery but also a kind of humility. As futuristic (or post-apocalyptic) as his sonic world may be, it never sounds as if it were created with posterity in mind. Don’t look to his work for clever gimmicks, glorified technique or catchy melodies that push the music to live on, in simplified form, beyond the listening experience. What is beyond the listening experience, after all? Pinhas has spent so long ahead of his time that it’s easy to forget even he doesn’t always know what’s next.  

Eric McDowell