Tryo - Iodine Clock Reaction (2023)

Country: Czechia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Mar 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

I haven't heard Sustainable Gardening, the 2021 debut from Czech band Tryo, but their Bandcamp page suggests that it was an indie/art rock album. Two years later, they've moved to what they're calling "darker and rawer music" on their follow-up and it's certainly an interesting sound because it's a hybrid of completely different eras of music.

The earliest is a pastoral folk sound that's very sixties. It's there mostly on the second side, in the quiet parts of Haze, early in Unity and especially on Home. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple of sections on Haze are pure krautrock, right out of the early seventies. The core sound is a clear derivative of the mid eighties, when post-punk and new wave were at their most interesting, and the early vocals of Šimon Podrazil are right out of eighties alternate rock, because they're so clean in delivery. However, everything's phrased as soundscapes, owing much to the post-rock and shoegaze genres of the nineties and noughties, but with vocals delivered over the top.

Given how confusing that sounds, I should emphasise that it all merges together rather well and it opens up with the most conventional of the six songs on offer, Droplets. This one was writen in 2015 when Tryo seem to have been a more conventional band, but it's been massively changed, mostly a new song built on the bones of the old one. Karabach is edgier, but more commercial too somehow and it reminded me of the way that Paradise Lost got retro-new wave, merely slower and subdued, so that it's clear to us that, unlike them, Tryo were never a metal band who calmed down.

Tree is a decent song but it's a little lost in between the commercial edge of Karabach and the wild experiments of Haze. It works well as a transition between the two but it works in isolation as well, finding a delightful groove early and milking it for over seven minutes. That doesn't stop it being a little overshadowed though, because Haze quickly takes over, not just grabbing our attention but chaining it to a bed and having its wicked way with it.

Haze is where the "darker and rawer music" really comes into play, because it's a tasty exercise in contrasts. It's softer initially with some of that sixties folky psychedelia but, when it ramps up, it's not holding back. It does that twice, the first time feeling rather like a nightmare descending upon a soft, dreamy soundscape, not unlike a late escalation in Tree but more. That nightmare passes, but it returns and the wheels come off, with Hynek Čejka soloing on drums and Podrazil's guitar a seriously abrasive weapon. Only Čejková's bass keeps us grounded as we move through it to come out the other side intact but changed.

What's telling is that it's hard to pick highlights here. Droplets is the most conventional. Karabach is the most commercial. Haze is the most experimental. Home is the most pastoral. Those are easy adjectives to assign, but it's not so easy to pick the best or even my favourite. I like Karabach a lot, but I recognise some of those chord changes so it has an unfair advantage. Haze is the most overt song here, enough so that it climbs out of the middle of the album to slap us across the cheeks and cry, "Me! Me! Me!"

At the end of the day, I might have to consciously ignore its attentions and call out the subtle songs with their impeccable grooves, wich to me means Tree and Home. It's not an easy call, but that's a good thing. It felt like the album had depths from the very beginning, on those more immediately accessible tracks, but it takes a few listens to truly grasp how much it's doing and to appreciate its subtleties. I'd never have called out Tree and Home on my first listen, but they grew on every fresh listen until they staked a serious claim to being what the album's about.

Here's where I'd normally say that Tryo are a fascinating band who are new to me, so I should look back at their earlier material. The first half of that holds true, but I don't think I do want to check out Sustainable Gardening at this point, because I don't want to suddenly find them conventional. They're not here and that's why I like this so much. I think I'll sit back and wait for the next one.

Boris - W (2022)

Country: Japan
Style: Dream Pop/Shoegaze/Experimental
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tumblr | Twitter | Wikipedia

You never know what you're going to get when you pick up a new Boris album, which is an ongoing joy with them. My last visit was their 2020 album NO, mostly punk in nature but with some stoner metal thrown in for good measure. This... well, this isn't, but it's hard to describe what it really is, because that depends on what aspects you focus on. If you focus on the instrumental aspect, as is likely on Drowning by Numbers, then it's experimental rock or experimental music with no genre mentioned. If you focus on the vocals, which are entirely provided by Wata this time out, then it's dream pop or shoegaze, because she remains soft and sweet throughout, whatever the band are doing behind her.

It's easier to explain what it isn't, because it's not remotely like NO except for the anomalous final track on that album, which I wondered about at the time because of its name. Who ends an album with an Interlude? Well, apparently Boris do and I can't help but wonder now if it was so named to point the way towards W. This isn't drone either, which is what I tend to think of when Boris's name comes up. There are points where feedback becomes a defining aspect, like on The Fallen, which is sort of industrial sludge, but this is a rare guitar piece, as much of the backdrop is electronic.

In fact, the closest comparison I can conjure up is Rickie Lee Jones's album Ghostyhead, especially on Drowning by Numbers, which isn't close what I might have expected to cite coming in. This one's decorated with sharper edges though, even when they're not as heavy as on The Fallen. And these edges are what define it the most. Because Wata's voice is so soft here, if the edges are primarily soft, then the effect is primarily dream pop, like on Beyond Good and Evil, but, the heavier these edges get, the more she fades into the background and that effect is lost.

I like this album, but it's an odd one, even for Boris's insanely varied back catalogue. Everything is contrast, with the levels adjusted song by song to achieve different effects. The vocals are sweet, but the backdrop is dissonant, whether it's sludge, industrial, electronic or even, on Old Projector, a sort of Coil-esque ambient take on surf, though it drifts into sludge later. Pieces of instrumental music like this one help make the album fascinating. It's never boring, even when you think that it kinda sorta should be.

It seems to me that it's an album to listen to and, if you have that sort of taste, appreciate, rather than one to dance to or journey with or rock out to. Even though it seems to be rock music, of some description, the effect feels more like what I get from a lot of contemporary classical. It's not that there aren't grooves here, because there are, but I found myself deconstructing them to find out what makes them tick, rather than sitting back and enjoying them. This is far more of an exercise in composition and construction than one in performance. Whether you dig it or not may depend on what you think about that last sentence.

And now I'm going to go and listen to Ghostyhead, because I haven't thought about that album in years. Thanks, Boris!

Hum - Inlet (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Shoegaze
Rating: 5/10
Release Date: 23 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia

Crosschecking end of year lists fascinates me. The album that shows up on most lists that I've trawled in thus far is Ulcerate's superb Stare into Death and Be Still. It made three top tens and one top five, as well as getting a highly recommended 8/10 from me, but nobody yet has listed it as their Album of the Year. Of the fifteen lists I'm looking at, nothing tops more than one. Two 2019 albums topped a pair of lists—Blood Incantation and Wilderun—and, in 2018, Yob topped four. So far, I've only reviewed four #1s from 2020, so I have catchup to do. Let's start with Hum's Inlet, which made four lists and was Andrew Sacher's Album of the Year at Invisible Oranges.

Hum are an alternative rock band from Champaign, IL whose four shoegaze albums in the nineties had a lot of other bands paying attention, not least the Deftones, whose 2020 album Ohms made five lists. However, they've done very little since, splitting up in 2000, reuniting for a one-off festival, reuniting fully in 2011 and playing a few odd gigs here and there. So when they dropped a fifth album with zero warning in June, it took everyone aback.

And it took me a while to figure this out, so I do wonder how much of the praise is just gratitude that an important band to many simply released new material for the first time in twenty-two years. Sure, I have almost no grounding in shoegaze, though I'm enjoying one of its successors, blackgaze, through bands like Alcest. I think my initial problem was in reconciling the heavy backdrop, which is more of a texture than a musical accompaniment, with the relentlessly slow drums and the clean but apparently only mildly interested vocals. It feels like it wants to crush but just can't be bothered.

I still can't get into the opener, Waves, but In the Den found me more receptive and the nine minutes of Desert Rambler got me on board. The former features a subtle and almost trancelike riff, a livelier voice that appears to have something to say and keyboards swirling around everything. It's like Gary Numan, covered by a band who don't want a hit single. For a quintessentially nineties band, it seemed very eighties to me, rooted in the New Romantic era but with all the fashion and other accoutrements ripped away and played in a garage at half speed.

All that stands for Desert Rambler but doubled because it's slower and the heaviness sometimes takes a break so that the guitar that's been chiming in over the wall of sound can get a word in edgeways. It feels like a weird hybrid of David Bowie, Joy Division and the Swans, but with that Gary Numan vibe a constant in the voice of Matt Talbott. Hum are clearly one of those bands who will go down in history as more influential to other musicians than regular people on the street. I think you need to be in the right mindspace to enjoy their music too but, once you find it, they can really trawl you in.

They seem to be very good at what they do, but what they do seems to not be for me. There are points where this caught my attention but I found myself drifting away from it often, to the degree that the song I thought I was listening to was over ten minutes earlier and I was two further into the album. Is it bad for losing me? Not necessarily, but if Hum see their job as conjuring up a soundscape the way a post-rock band does, then it's pretty important to make that soundscape evocative enough to drag us in and immersive enough to keep us. This apparently does that for some people, but not me.