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Architeuthis Rex, "Dark as the Sea"
This is one of those kind of albums that is impossible to pigeonhole in any sort of specific genre. There’s some drone elements, but those are mostly overshadowed by tribal drumming. There’s dubby production, but also layers of noise and mutated psychedelic rock. All the while there’s a little bit of metal here and there. Named for a giant squid, this Italian project certainly has its tentacles entangled amongst themselves to create an unclassifiable blur, but it’s a compelling racket.
"Untitled No. 1" opens the album with heavy cavernous guitar feedback and tribal drumming echoing from the deepest parts of the sea, locking into a repetition that never stagnates. The drums speed up into more intricate, chaotic patterns before the entire mix collapses under the weight of itself, devolving into a primordial muck of sound. "We Dream the Seashore" almost literally uses its title as a jumping off point, with pegged out field recordings creating a noise bed that crashing waves of noise and jackhammer rattling and junky percussion sales upon, the full proceedings sounding a junk metal noise band freaking out by the sea.
Sandwiched in the middle of the album are a series of tracks that show a hint of 1960s psychedelic rock shining through. "Cephalopedie" features swirling rock guitars with mutated gamelan percussion and far eastern strings, resembling that era’s penchant for mixing eastern and western sounds, but with an entire doomsday cult’s stash of LSD. The title track uses a similar sonic clash, but with swirling tablas and a noisy bed of electronics, like the MC5 playing through a busted PA in the middle of Riyadh, with occasional intrusion of Xenakis and his noisy compositions. For all its chaos, the end hides beautiful melodies amidst the darkness.
The massive "Another Kind of Blue" combines tribal tabla playing and junk percussion at the opening, treating all of it with dubbed out echoes that would make Lee Perry even madder than he already is before launching into full on noise territory via waves of feedback and guitar squalls. Once the noise retreats, what remains is anemic guitar and tortured psychedelic rock, later met by shortwave radio loops of lost vocal transmissions. The entire track then goes into sharp, banging metallic rock before falling apart at the end.
"Bbroke" continues the more obtuse side of Rex’s sound, with a muffled, aquatic guitar squeal that channels the best of black metal with massive sustain, but is actually one of the most sparse tracks here, allowing the ugly guitar to stand on its own. The closing "Untitled No. 2" takes clattering metal percussion but puts it alongside warm, fuzzy organ drone and other unidentifiable elements that are somewhat musical, creating an inviting closer to the album that is the perfect metaphor for returning to the surface after a deep, frightening dive.
The aquatic imagery in both the band and album names comes through in the sound, as it all has that dark, murky quality of a deep sea dive. The tracks are dark and obscured, with only the most minimal of light shining through to show unknown creatures and organisms. Architeuthis Rex has a very unique sound and concept that I definitely want to hear more of in the future.
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