Streaming: So Hideous - Laurestine

Band: So Hideous
Album: Laurestine
Label: Prosthetic Records
Year: 2015








Tracklist
01. Yesteryear
02. Here After
03. Relinquish
04. The Keepsake
05. Falling Cedars
06. The True Pierce
07. A Faint Whisper
Streaming

From NYC, So Hideous combines intense, blackened hardcore with orchestral elements to create a unique blend of music that has been called a "raging force of post-black metal; frothing with shoegaze and oozing with tortured melancholy.

Having formed in 2008 and with two EPs and a full-length under their belts, Brooklyn’s orchestral post-metal outfit, So Hideous, are set to release their most ambitious offering to date with their seven song conceptual opus, Laurestine.

Founded by Brandon Cruz (guitar), his intent was to score soundtracks to films that have yet to be made and sites Arvo Part, Ennio Morricone and Beethoven as his main influences. After many lineup changes, Brandon eventually enlisted his brother Chris (bass/vocals) and childhood friends Etienne Vazquez (guitar) and Danny Moncada (drums) to round out the group.

It’s safe to say that So Hideous write music a little differently than most bands of their genre. Each song starts off being written on piano with the orchestration built in next. The guitars, bass and drums fall into place only after the orchestral foundation is complete.

The band recorded Laurestine at The Wild Arctic Recording Studio in Portsmouth, NH with producer Dean Baltulonis (Brand New, The Explosion, Sick of it All). Orchestral elements were recorded a few weeks later at Little Field Performance & Art Space in Brooklyn, NY by Chris Montgomery (Mumford And Sons, Lily Allen, Florence And The Machine).

For Laurestine, a thirty-piece orchestra was enlisted for the album. Assembled by the band members, the orchestra is known as The First Light Orchestra, which consists of brass and string sections and also includes a small choir. The result is a more dynamic interplay between the band and orchestra with both aspects treated not as support or accouterments, but fully formed expressions able to exist without the other.

To compliment the musical achievement that is Laurestine, So Hideous brought on Italian illustrator/comic artist Daniel Serra (Shining SW) to handle the elaborate album artwork. Serra, who painted the artwork using his watercolor technique, had the following to say, “It was very interesting to work on this piece, first because it was a particular format, very long and narrow and then because the band provided a preliminary sketch with very specific guidelines, so I had to combine my style with an old classic style that it could remember painters like El Greco.”

It has been said that following death, the brain is active for seven minutes, one’s life flashes before one’s eyes and the ascent towards the afterlife begins. This is narrative behind Laurestine. The number 7 factors heavily into the fabric of the overall album as the number serves as a constant reminder of the seven last minutes of life as they pass. With seven total tracks, Laurestine is written in 7/4 and 7/8 time signatures with recurring motifs of that meter found throughout.

“The album starts off with our character, who is simply known as "man,” dying at the opening piano notes of Yesteryear,” states Brandon Cruz. “He then begins his journey through an altered sensory landscape where he first notices a laurestine flower and hears a woman's voice. Intrigued, he follows the voice.”

Laurestine or Viburnum Tinus flowers in the winter months and endures in the harshest conditions. It is considered a deathless flower and is also the name of the woman guiding “man” throughout the album. Brandon further explains, “Laurestine leads “man” through a series of distant memories, fragmented life events juxtaposed with experiences well beyond the scope of his understanding.”

So Hideous’ unique approach to songwriting and attention to the album’s overall theme is what truly separates them from the countless other band’s of the post-whatever genre. Many critics have taken note of this, giving high praise to the band’s debut full-length, Last Poem/First Light. Originally self-released, such admiration towards the album lead to Los Angeles based Prosthetic Records signing the band and reissuing the album in the spring of 2014. Tours and festivals followed and towards the end of the year, Brandon sat himself down in front of his piano and Laurestine began to take shape.

Seven minutes reflecting on one’s life and preparing for the afterlife doesn’t seem like a lot of time. Truth be told, it’s a towering and a beautiful concept, one that the Laurestine captures perfectly to form.

We closed our eyes and slept...

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Album: Yob - Atma

Band: Yob
Album: Atma
Label: Profound Lore
Year: 2011










Tracklist
01. Prepare The Ground
02. Atma
03. Before We Dreamed Of Two (feat. Scott Kelly)
04. Upon The Sight Of The Other Shore
05. Adrift In The Ocean (feat. Scott Kelly)
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Despite the visibility a certain strain of doom has received in the last decade – owing largely to the high profile of Southern Lord releases, and a few very prominent bands in particular (no knock on them) – the sub-genre is still a fairly misunderstood one. Many folks will associate it with either the druggy riff-obsession of the Cathedral/Orange Goblin/Electric Wizard tradition or the heavy drones of the Earth/Esoteric/Sunn 0))) tradition. Not only is it simplifying to classify bands in those ways, even if we acknowledge the accuracy of those placeholders, there’s a shit-ton of doom left hanging that confounds these impressions. And this is where Oregon’s YOB has always lived, as the trio has carved out its own heavily melancholic, melodic, and emotionally heavy music over the course of four full-lengths (and one by Middian, singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt’s brief sojourn away from YOB).

While the band has always had a fanatical following, until recently they’ve been sadly overlooked. This makes little sense, given an undeniably broad appetite for heaviness and trance-inducing music in the last decade. But then again, every listener has a shortlist of bands they deem more worthy of greater acclaim, and since moving to Profound Lore with 2009’s The Great Cessation, YOB has started a push toward the front rank that fifth album Atma should only continue.

With the first passages of “Prepare the Ground,” we’re reminded that YOB’s universe is defined by a certain kind of harmonic motion as much as by the power of the riff. Mike S’s particular melancholies – heard in his phaser-heaving guitar tone, his nasal keening cum bellow, and the tug of the chord progressions he favors – are immediately recognizable. And, at the usually glacial pace (nowhere more than on the lengthy epics that he includes on each album, here with the closing “Adrift in the Ocean”), it’s very hard to resist falling into this world. And indeed, the opener has the same kind of downward pull and angst heard on The Great Cessation. But lest you think it’s just another YOB album (no bad thing), the title track is a positively slashing, mid-tempo fury of repetition and punctuations. This level of aggression and rhythmic urgency is new for the band, and is pretty great live, too.

With “Before We Dreamed of Two” the band heads in the opposite direction, into territory that’s very spare even for this group. After an opening dirge riff, the piece dives into a section for clean guitar, the sound of waves, and a killer guest vocal from Neurosis’ Scott Kelly (who also croaks a couple passages on the closing tune). It’s a fitting preface to the catharsis of “Upon the Sight of the Other Shore,” with a nice contrast between the melodic filigree of the guitar and the misanthropic vocals. Hard to deny, though, that the most powerful piece is the closing “Adrift on the Ocean,” with a spacey reflectiveness that treads heavily in Scheidt’s recurring concerns. As a vocalist he’s long been preoccupied with vaguely Buddhist themes like the annihilation of the self and the sink into nothingness, notions that fit YOB’s musical obsessions in space, weight and the refrain. With Atma, the trio has perfected its blend of dynamics, space and texture, all of which serve to make one of the heaviest bands around more than merely heavy in any conventional sense.

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Album: Equus - Eutheria

Band: Equus
Album: Euthoria
Label: Get A Life! Records
Year: 2008






Tracklist
01.Hyracotherium (31:14)
02.Orronn Tugenensis (21:15)
03.Epona (15:20)
Download (thanx to youyouzi1983 for the original link)

Equus, the brand new band related to Get A Life! Records, is a Geneva all stars fourtet featuring members of Brakhage, Chapter, Impure Wilhelmina, Iskander, Seaplane Harbor, Shora, Swoan and Vargas. They deliver a passionate and personal blend of instrumental prog-post-rock, crossing the historical borders between 60’s minimalism,70’s prog rock and the reserved tension you might find in modern hardcore. Their first album has been recorded and mixed with TVO in Geneva and mastered by Bob Weston in Chicago.

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Band: Daturah

Band: Daturah
Album: Daturah
Label: Graveface Records
Year: 2005





Tracklist
01.Shoal
02.Warmachines
03.Lovelight
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Band: Daturah
Album: Reverie
Label: Golden Antenna
Year: 2008






Tracklist
01.Ghost Track
02.Hybrisma
03.9
04.Deep B Flat
05.Vertex
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Band Members
Mathias - guitar
Flo - guitar
Patrick - drums
Benni - bass
Seb - samples, synth
Additional Members
Raul - live visuals

Daturah (Frankfurt, Germany) present five monumental, but dynamically warm and dreamy songs. Daturah exist since December 2003 and released their debut feature in May 2005 on their own. This self-titled record was released half a year later on the american label Graveface Records. In the next year the band played nearly a hundred shows with e.g. Mono, Gregor Samsa, Do Make Say Think or The Thermals. In spring of 2007 the band decided to back out of doing live performances in order to devote themselves on their work for the second full-length.
„Reverie“ is the title of their new record. Hardly superior the title could be, describing in one word and gasp what the record accounts for: musical musing, where the listener finds himself for sixty minutes in five long songs engrossed from reality and sempiternal reexperienced. The warm, harmonic atmosphere of Daturahs music enwraps the listener and with intensive determination they wont let him escape that quick from their smoothly woven soundweb. The assembled samples let the harmonious cocoon of sound, entitled “Reverie”, appear somewhat more direct and human.
On the one hand the listener gets drawn by capillary walls of guitars, gyrating far to the top like a griffon in the warm summer wind above the sea. Thermal winds. Calm and majestic rotarying, in puissant orbits. A major, overlooking view confesses. On the other hand one gets pulled under in a maelstrom with captivating power through the hushed and silent moments. You immerse in the sea, slump slowly and land suave on the ground.
Sand disperses. Counterpoints are set discreet. Suddenly and abrupt you climb up. Newly awoken the listener gets pulled up in a mighty swirl. Resistance seems pointless, but maybe someone is rescuing the listener from an apocalyptical, stormy sea…

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Album: Johnnytwentythree - JXXIII

Artist: Johnnytwentythree
Album: JXXIII
Label: Self Released
Year:2007





Tracklist
01. Red Bird
02 .Ghost Soldier
03. Into The Depths
04. Last Exit
05. Fall Of Swords
06. A Minute's Warning
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Others combine sound and cinema to dramatic effect, but few scratch so deeply and seek out bare nerves as j23. Replacing words with visuals is a defining choice for a band. There will never be any arena sing-alongs, and most will dismiss you with, "They need a singer." But the ability to inspire feelings so powerfully without words is surely it's own reward.

Reverb and delay-drenched guitar delirium, precision ambient-to-pounding rhythmic building and gorgeous siren-song violin are the tools they use to create instrumental swells.

The video projections, a large part of j23's appeal, only began in earnest recently. Stephen Imwalle (who played drums for Halo, a taproot of the j23 tree) has an ever-expanding collection of homemade films that he projects, usually simultaneously, behind the band. Watching him run between his four projectors and frantically feeding tape is more entertaining than the work of most frontmen.

www.johnnytwentythree.com
Myspace: www.myspace.com/j23music
Buy it here: Official Store