belong’s october language, which is out on carpark, has become a staple on my drive home from work the last few days. while this duo has garnered comparisons to my bloody valentine and other shoegaze legends because of the towering, dense wall of sound on display, i really felt like it was much more akin to a lot of the early and mid 90’s ambient stuff like seefeel or global communications pentamorous metamorphosis reworking of chapterhouse’s blood music album, not to mention later progeny such as christian fennesz and johann johannson. for one, there may only be about 45 total seconds of drum-based rhythm on this album, yet the whole thing is propulsively entrancing, even though to many it may sound as if it moves at a glacial pace.
while this album is more or less guitar-based, the level of attention paid in the studio to each subtle nuance is impressive. the instrument is transformed into everything from massive sheets of dense white noise to lonesome wind sweeping across a cracking antarctican surface. the epic nature of the album makes it quite easy to envision found-cinema visuals for these sounds. it even had me conjuring tracklists for throwback mix tapes that were perfectly comfortable opening with samples of a thunderstorm and ending with the sounds of rain — and rightly so, as the album’s closer, “the door opens the other way” concludes in a summer storm of fuzzy, static electronic noise.
belong - i never lose, really really (thanks to carpark for hosting this one)
belong - the door opens the other way
they’ve got a few live dates upcoming:
February 24th - New York, NY @ Knitting Factory *
February 24th - New York, NY - After party at Cake Shop - midnight
February 25th - Philadelphia, PA @ The Khyber *
February 26th - Chapel Hill, NC @ Nightlight
February 28th - Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn *
March 1st - Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon *
March 2nd - Houston, TX @ The Proletariat *
March 3rd - Austin, TX @ Emo’s *
March 4th - Dallas, TX @ Hailey’s *
March 15th - Austin, TX - SXSW @ Habana Calle 6
* with Ariel Pink