volcano the bear
the mountains among us
| home |
| news |
| releases |
| re/inter views |
| product |
| other projects |
| art |
| downloads |
|
The Volucan release comes with an exclusive bonus CD-R Voleven (Volucan 011), limited to 45 copies. It has two tracks by Volcano The Bear, and one from various side-projects: Songs Of Norway, The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden, El Monte & Aranos, Guignol, El Monte, and Earth Trumpet. And a bug.
REVIEWS "...This year sees the eruption of the Volcano with a myriad of releases leaving the town folk covered in a fine and mysterious silt of musical entropy. The extremely limited release of The Mountains Among Us finds our boys spelunking the creepiest of dream spawned caves, excavating crystalline fragments along the way, which are then set in beautiful mental jewellery appropriate for any formal occasion. Arpeggiated blurs and disinterred voices snap, crackle and pop as an unnamed rusted hulk is slowly pushed across an ever morphing open landscape. A real symphony of the spheres that showcases this Volcano's ability to blow its top and rain sweet tweeky kittens on the valley below..."
"...An unsettling patchwork of ominous melodic mutations, spiritual sounds from the other side pour through ... the macabre canvas ... like you're partaking in a boat ride with death..."
"...One of those very ultra-limited releases that if you donÕt own a copy yet itÕs safe to say you may have missed the boat. Limited to only 200 copies, the packaging on this cute thing is worth the entrance fee alone and is typical of the delicate attention paid to every aspect of their releases that Beta-Lactam Ring Records who self-describe themselves as "the label dedicated to releasing uncommon music with unique packaging in this age of mass production" make. This particular copy is a limited pressing of 40 issued by the band direct. The package includes a CD-R of various VTB oddities and offshoots that may or may not be in the pipeline, a plastic toy insect, an individually signed piece of art work by Aaron, plus the record itself, two elongated album length tracks pressed on 12 inches of seriously heavy duty vinyl. Supreme And Sublime, Like No Other Temptress Is The Sweet Golden Crest Of My Distant Wave takes its place on side one. An unsettling patchwork of ominous melodic mutations, spiritual sounds from the other side, or so it seems, pour through to infect the macabre canvas provided by the Volcanos, making you feel like your partaking in a boat ride with death. As icy and as disconnected as anything by Stockhausen, "Supreme And Sublime..." appears alienated, a confusion of half-hinted ideas, the friction between natural devices (the sounds of birds) and the manipulated adds to the unfathomable path which VTB furrow. The formation is all at once eerie, haunting and tense, likened to being the next victim in waiting in a Hitchcock movie. Whereas their previous release Five Hundred Boy Piano is tangible psychedelia, Supreme And Sublime... is more intent on creating atmospheres and devising the nightmares to go with them. In many respects it's a salute to the radiophonic workshop, the icy textures and sombre overlays transporting you back to the childhood nights hiding behind the settee riddled with fear at the Daleks. Dragon Or Emperor inhabiting the flip side is a lot more forgiving, still deep in tense atmospheric textures, the sound manipulations utilise subtle middle eastern reference points. Sounding as though it's been divided into subplots, it still veils a sense of unease on the listener, the drone cycles bear down ominously only to melt towards the close with some dreamy pastoral acoustics. Supplemented by a soothing string section, the pastoral ambience soon melts away to reveal a sinisterish haunting spectacle beneath. Wickedly weird..."
"...The Mountains Among Us ... may be VTB's most laid back recording to date (sidestepping the tongue-in-cheek and absurdity of earlier outings), presenting a variation on the idea of drone whose strength lies in its inclusion of other extraneous sounds, thereby focussing interest by challenging the dynamic, while bowed cymbals and strings still provide the ground..."
|