Sumer is icumen in

It actually feels like we’re getting a proper Summer this year in the UK. After several years of large swathes of humid, overcast days filling the months of June to September, to have had what feels like near constant sunshine since the middle of March feels like it’s both rewired my brain chemistry and reconfigured my sense of time. Summer could sometimes feel like it was swept away in a compacted, harried rush, whereas this year the Solstice was only a few weeks ago and it feels like there is a large expanse of time ahead and several months before the nights start drawing in.

This is delightful news, especially for me, as despite being the prime target audience for a Neurosis Enemy Of The Sun t-shirt, I’ve been loving spending as much time outside as possible, and with various walks and train journeys it feels like there’s an extra charge within the air when listening to music.

Talking with friends it seems there is a consensus that this one feels different to previous years, that the prolonged sunshine (and Vitamin D) reignites life around it, that it’s a time for new habits and means of living, both in small routines and deeper questions of what it is to really be present.

Summer of course also can have it’s darker side - the disorientating, headache-riddled effects of too much sun, the buckling of failing infrastructure in prolonged heat, overly intoxicated and dehydrated crowds, getting caught out exposed to the elements with neither shade nor relief, there can be moments where it is starkly apparent how fragile this sense of bliss can be.

Don’t-Don’t-Don’t-Don’t - Look At What’s In Front of You

This darker side of Summer was beautifully encapsulated in 28 Years Later - a reeling, spirituous trip of a film, something far closer to the 80’s subversive anarchic strain of old issues of 2000AD and White Dwarf than it is to traditional Horror or Zombie movies. I loved it and came out of the cinema with my mind blazing. I feel like it’s a film about myth, and what happens when the myths that a person (or group of people), tells about themselves, begin to ebb and recede. When they extend beyond what we create and think of them, and how they wax and wane in strange ways when a society no longer moves forward.

Myth of protective father, myth of an island community, myth of Nature, myth of Nation.

It is also beautifully shot, a lot of the tension coming from scenes with the Infected unfolding in broad daylight (with the exception of the stunning ‘Causeway’-scene) - the whole thing comes across as a parched, heat-stroke-induced fever-dream, a grim inversion of the cosy parochialism of Detectorists that also isn’t neatly compartmentalised into Folk-Horror either. It sits in it’s own phantasmagorical enclosure; both Wyndham-ian and Punk Rock. A strange commons of history, imagination, landscape and biting humour as the only means of dealing with present circumstances. It’s also possibly the only film I’ve seen in a cinema that had me thinking simultaneously of William Blake (the gigantic Alpha zombies having a touch of his Four Zoas, themselves the result of the fall of primeval man, Albion, in Blake’s illustrated mythology) and old Anarcho and Peace Punk bands.

The Fields Are Covered In Blood

With the light of the longest day now behind us, I wanted to hone in on some artists and records that feel like they have some alignment with the atmosphere of 28 Years…

First up is a record that I feel perfectly encapsulates that heliosistic, disorientating feeling of having ‘caught too much sun’, Black Fellflower Stream by Sunrise Patriot Motion. An eerie and unique amalgamation of stompy post-punk, industrial, dungeon synth and traces of black metal, it is in their own words “…a portrait of obsession and torment set entirely in a single isolated field where a man in the throes of mania believes he is capable of digging a hole deep enough to reach oil.”

Driving and paranoid in equal measure, direct comparisons to other artists is somewhat difficult but there are some definite nods to The Cure, Killing Joke, even perhaps Amebix if they traded the high-contrast black and white for an oversaturated technicolour haze. For more contemporary references I actually feel like there’s flickers of Self Defense Family across the album, an alternate timeline in which Patrick Kindlon had been tasked by Alan Moore to write a comic melding There Will Be Blood and A Field In England and being driven slowly mad from the endeavour.

It comes as no surprise that Sunrise Patriot Motion has the Skarstad brothers of excellent black metal band Yellow Eyes writing and composing the music, you can hear the essence of their particular form spidery, discordant and mystifying guitar melodies all across the album.

As a couple of companion pieces I really recommend Yellow Eye’s Rare Field Ceiling (there are a lot of fields in this piece eh?) as you can hear some definite similarities in their sound, although this is unquestionably a black metal record albeit one that feels arid, disquieting and insolate, as opposed to grim and cold.

The other is from Will Skarstad’s solo project Ustalost which develops those anxious, skittering guitar parts alongside some more prominent synths and driving bass to carve out something that is just different enough to Yellow Eye’s discography to stand by itself. Consider it the Midsommar to Ulver’s Autumnal Bergtatt and you may get an idea of the bucolic delights it has in store.

If you want to jump into more of Yellow Eye’s work I recommend this excellent piece that bandcamp put out last year and I’m really keen to hear the new record which hopefully will be out sometime this year.

Tomorrow’s Harvest

As a bit of balance to all the riffs and distortion I’ve selected some electronica and ambient albums that are unquestionably melodic but still have a slight edge of haunting melancholy to them.

First up is the latest from Rival Consoles and a great return to form after a few albums that didn’t quite hit the highs (and excellent pacing) of 2018’s Persona. This matches that record’s ability to hold both glitchy and skittery tracks that really build, and beautiful ambient interludes. There’s a bit more of a focus on rhythm and staccato melody this time, and some excellent creative flourishes (I love the feint that opening track In Reverse does at 1:50) that keep the whole record really engaging.

If you fancy a techno-adjacent album to have alongside Landscape From Memory that matches it’s excellent pacing, then I really recommend the album that Barker released this Spring, Stochastic Drift.

For more droned-out, hazy atmospheres then Prime Vertical channel a sense of the Ballard-ian horizons that Boards of Canada really developed on their last album, the second half of the record in particular dwelling in it’s post-apocalyptic splendour beautifully.

Finally as I round things up I have to mention the incredible oddity that is Trhä - an insanely prolific (there’s almost too much material to delve into, hence why I’ve picked this single track out) black metal ambient project that seems to communicate in it’s own language and feels like a perfect amalgamation of the artists and atmospheres I’ve described above. This is music that feels like it really slips between different points of consciousness and madness - drum machines, synths and guitars all weaving in to and out of one another, it can be beautiful but is also extremely abrasive.

That’s it for this month, wishing you a great rest of your Summer.

Thanks for reading

x

M