Creating Stories With Endless Fire

I doubt Ill do this record justice - I've been sitting on this so long, using it whilst I write a existential short story about as boy who finds a Colt revolver in his backyard that speaks to him (it's probably as shit as it sounds), that the lines have been irreversibly blurred. Another great release from Immune Recordings, With Endless Fire is a bit of a mind fuck album from drone/folk/something explorer Ilyas Ahmed. I hadn't heard his stuff before, until I found out that he is one half of Visitor (the other half being Elizabeth Harris AKA Grouper). There is a certain timbre that emanates from Ahmed's croon that, mirrored with the acoustic and electric guitar, the harmonium, the loops, it seems torn between warmth and isolation, an utterly intriguing listening experience. Scoring swirling skies over a scorched earth, a peyote totem search through the desert - or a boy with a gun as the ash starts to fall.


You can get With Endless Fire here - it's a compelling record well worth you time.

Ilyas Ahmed - Stained Sky
Ilyas Ahmed - Now Sleeps

Nothing Clear About The Breaking Day

Now here is ANOTHER album that was floating in the inbox in the aftermath of Christmas where I stockpiled nigh on 700 emails. There are probably heaps more that have slipped through, but I'm glad that Chicago duo Cleared's second LP Breaking Day managed to float to the surface like a bloated corpse - well, not that luridly morbid, but its a dark listen. Maybe it's serendipity - one of the duo Michael Vallera has collaborated with David Daniell in the past, whose current collab with Douglas McCombs I raved about only hours previous! Wow, right? Ahem.

So, the album is an intense ride of noise, that ebbs and flows like lunar tides. Opener 'Rogues' is probably the hardest to digest, utilising a lot of feedback, white noise and cymbals to create a relentless surge of confronting sound that nonetheless is alluring due to its hypnotic aural pendulum. 'Sighted' is an undulating schism of droning nothingness, the perfect purgatory for the release of the psych dirge of the title track. 'No Path To Claim' echoes like a beleaguered broadcast from a discarded and forgotten space probe, whilst the mono synthesia of 'Quartz' gives way to the heaving closer 'The Harvest', all skittering menace without release. These recordings are eerie and otherworldly, but most of all they refuse to give easy answers, instead offering for ambient distance and abrasive obtuseness - things that tend to alienate even ardent drone fans. The dark jewels are in there - are you brave enough to venture in?


Breaking Day is out now through Immune Recordings - grab it here.

Cleared - Rogues
Cleared - Breaking Day