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COH, "Seasons"
The fourth release from COH this year is the first all-new recording. Four paintings and four pieces represent the year's four seasons, recorded and painted from summer 2001 to spring 2002 by Ivan Pavlov and his wife, deliberately conceived and packed on a limited double 12" vinyl set in a glossy gatefold cover.
The concept itself has obvious parallels to Coil's Equinox / Solstice project: COH's approach is different, less magickal perhaps but not less impressive. "The Colour Of Beauty, Summer Is Red (A Forest Fire For Fèlix Lajk?" starts with a 'suffering' violin by Janesse Stewart set against Pavlov's computer-generated structure. His idea of summer is quite different from the obvious ones; there's no hint of beach life or good times outside but an instant pressure, like when the heat reaches its peak and people are about to turn crazy. The accompanying painting is the front cover and the listener follows the trees trough the year graphically and musically. "As Ripe As Autumn's Tears " is very sparse and melancholic. The autumn tree itself is overripe behind the pouring rain. A field recording by Peter Christopherson of November rain opens the piece before COH plays the Grand Piano in an abstract somewhat minimalistic way. Both the artwork and the music work well together as the overall mood is very calm and bordering on ritualistic. "Winter Broading Underneath," once again features J. Stewart, this time on cello, but only echoes of it are recognizable in the frosty and compact drone piece. This is the shortest and harshest of the four. Bleak trees in the dark accompany this one graphically. "Springs Come Shooting: Make Love, Make War" closes the circle and is the most accessible track. In the beginning, this is reminiscent of COH as he is known; a sparkling optimistic manipulated sequence by Tin-y dominates the first half until it crashes into an heavy drone guitar solo by Ivan Pavlov. Dedicated to the god Mars and the artist Russel Haswell (probably in reverse order), the trees on the back cover grow together in an act of love in front of a blue sky. 'Seasons' is probably his most sincere and ambitious work yet but also his most unconstrained in use of structures and instrumentation. It's a great and promising step sideways from his semi-laptop-pop stardom and may even be a glimpse of what the future might bring. As the edition is quite low (only 400 pressed), I recommend pestering Idea's distributors if there are difficulties finding it.
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