Well, my time consuming commitments be they social or academic or charity oriented are drawing to a close and will finally allow me the time to return to the thrilling world of solitary music nerd blogging! I realize it's been a long time and I extend my gratitude to the legions of devoted readers for their patience, thank you all, danka, medasi paa, etc.
As a first post, I'd like to put up a double header of Red Sparowes. This is nothing to hard to come by and is sort of all over the blogosphere but for those of you that only come here (there are those!) check this out. I had the pleasure of seeing these cats live about a month ago and it was phenomenal. The heavy post-rock sounds were supplemented by projected video and photo images that fit each different song. The images were filtered to produce a different monochromatic bakdrop to the different sections of the performance and included things like Paris after the war, pidgeons taking flight, wind on a flag, on sand, on grass, on hair, Birds flying in slow motion, Chairman Mao, Churchill, Stalin, and locusts, lots of locusts among other effective pretty things.
The first post, Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun Is easily one of the best records of 2006. The album starts right off the mark blazing with a great distorted bass riff and turns quickly into the stunning mix of interlocking guitars and lap steel that is to carry on throughout. The music is very heavy in a non-metal sort of way. As the group was originally comprised of members of bands such as Isis and Neurosis it's not surprising that the music bears close resemblence to the more post-rock elements of those outfits. Basically, if you are at all interested in the aforementioned bands you are very likely to seriously dig these guys. If you're not familiar with the aforementioned bands this would be a fabulous entry point to approach the post-metal genre from the less metal side. Conceptually the album deals with the purge of sparrows in China underneath Chairman Mao. The sparrows would steal seeds from the fields of small holder farmers and were thought to be responsible for the dire crop yields experienced during this time. The plan then was to eradicate the sparrows throughout the country. However, this removed the natural enemy of the locust with the tragic result of even more severe crop losses, another example of human power exerting itself where it has no earthly business being involved.
The other post At the Soundless Dawn is the first album of the group and is similarly spectacular. The theme this time focuses more on the cancerous spread of urbanization and industrialization at a pace that neither allows nature nor humans to develop healthy ways of being in the new reality. Grab them both, give them a cursory listen, enough to convince yourself to buy the damn things, it's worth it.Website
Myspace Page
Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun
Red Sparowes - At the Soundless Dawn
