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Thighpaulsandra, "Chamber Music"
There's something about the music of Thighpaulsandra that is quintessentially British sounding, but this compositional four-track spurt from the Welsh Valleys doesn't rely on stirringly pompous anthems or traditional folk instrumentation to do it.
There’s an audible grandness of sound to Chamber Music that evokes some kind of depraved royalty, and when combined with the sinister darker side to this amiable bright collaborator of the stars, there lies the unique futurepast hybrid of Thighpaulsandra’s sound.
Stepping away from the improv of Rape Scene (but keeping the theme of two-faced album titles) hasn’t altered his musical world all that much and there are strong similarities to that release here despite the songs here having been written and rehearsed; his own description of the album as ‘four men in a room playing’ defies its odd nature. There are many things I’d expect three men to get up to in a room with Thighpaulsandra, and this LP isn’t one of them.
The four intrepid players begin at the edge of Quatermass’s pit for the seven-minute mental health ride of “Cast in Dead Homes.” It’s a typical Thighpaulsandra composition in that you never know what’s the around the next audio corner as he explores imaginary landscapes with a reliable palette of après-prog instrumentation. Like an unravelling Hammer Horror theme there’s always an element of restraint in the song’s theatrical lurching xylophone and ribcage played melody that extends across the whole LP.
The spectre of Tangerine Dream lurks on both “A Blizzard of Altars” and “Bleeding Text for the Cripplethrush,” whose analogue based sounds are slowly filtered through personalized hybrid processors and begin to betray their origins turning up as warped digital conundrums. The erratic swarm of ingredients continues on and ends up including a brief Eastern European/Edgar Allen Poe-style soliloquy alongside a theremin and the sound of fox hunt horns. It even has the temerity to unashamedly end with a section of conservative organ/rock guitar soloing in the finest spirit of prog.
Further highlighting his ability to handle a tune and his empathy with space music “The Unwilling Wardens of Ice” takes the long route of fourteen and a half minutes to lay down some eerie and indistinct curved notes. As expected he ends the song and the album in relative crashing chaos despite taking several almost symphonic whale song-style turns. Judging by his recent release schedule I’ll bet on him confounding expectations again on another release before the year is out.
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