Posted in Whathaveyou on June 29th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
So I guess when Garden State speed rock treasures The Atomic Bitchwax put out that Bowie cover video and said their new album, Scorpio, had had its release delayed owing to — DUH THE SAME SHIT THAT’S DELAYING EVERYTHING INCLUDING LIFE ITSELF — that was kind of a soft-announcement for the album itself. Fair enough. The record’s a scorcher and a groover through and through, so announce it then, announce it now, whatever. It’s gonna tear shit up just the same, whenever it gets released. It’s the Bitchwax‘s first record with Garrett Sweeny, so that’s a change, but a lot of the core mission of the band remains the same. I’d go on, but hell, I wrote the bio below, so in some ways I’ve said my piece already.
And yeah, I posted about the record before, but frankly, I like keeping these things for posterity, and it’s nice to have the official thing, plus the bio I wrote. I should probably start keeping track of when I do these things. Whatever.
Preorders are up and the video for the title-track is at the bottom of the post. Not at all shockingly, it rules:
THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX Announce Studio New Album ‘Scorpio’ Out August 28th via Tee Pee Records
WATCH: Music Video for New Single “Scorpio”
New Jersey-based rock n’ roll trio THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX have announced their new studio album, ‘Scorpio’, which will see an August 28th release via Tee Pee Records. The group, which originally formed in the mid-90s, consists of lead vocalist/bassist Chris Kosnik, drummer Bob Pantella, and guitarist Garrett Sweeny, all of whom are past or present members of the band Monster Magnet. Scorpio is the follow up to the group’s 2017 full-length ‘Force Field’, and their eighth studio LP overall spanning more than two decades.
‘Scorpio’ Tracklisting: 1. Hope You Die 2. Energy 3. Ninja 4. Scorpio 5. Easy Action 6. Crash 7. Super Sonic 8. You Got It 9. Betting Man 10. Instant Death
BIO:
The scourge and scorch of New Jersey returns, and their sting is deadly as ever. Garden State riff rock stalwarts The Atomic Bitchwax proudly present their eighth full-length, Scorpio.
In a busy three years since NJ’s most powerful power trio issued 2017’s Force Field, they’ve toured the US and Europe multiple times over, taken part in fests far and wide, and blown past the 20th anniversary of their self-titled debut album.
Scorpio acknowledges the two-decades milestone in its opening revamp of the first song the band ever wrote with vocals, “Hope You Die,” the crash-in of which will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s seen them live. A generation later, it still gets the message across.
From then on, it’s all-go on nine fresh-made burners, founding bassist/vocalist Chris Kosnik, guitarist Garrett Sweeny, and drummer Bob Pantella toying with tempo subtly to lace songs like “Betting Man” and “Easy Action” and “Energy” with signature-style memorable hooks amid instrumentals “Ninja,” “Crash” and “Instant Death,” the head-spinning turns of which push ahead in the aggressive stance The Bitchwax began to present in 2015’s Gravitron while still remaining imbued with new character and the loyalty to classic heavy rock that underlies all their work.
Tracked in Jan. 2020 at Sound Spa in Edison, NJ, with Stephen DeAcutis engineering, Scorpio is a righteous next stage of the momentum The Atomic Bitchwax have been building through hard touring and release after release of gauntlet-throwing-down rock and roll. This is a band that never stops moving, and only ever moves forward.
Posted in audiObelisk on June 29th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Here’s what you need to know: On Sept. 18, Heavy Psych Sounds will release Doom Sessions Vol. 2, bringing together Italy’s 1782 and Greece’s Acid Mammoth. Yeah, I know, Doom Sessions Vol. 1, with Conan and Deadsmoke isn’t even out until July 17, but I guess the label is trying to stay ahead of the game. What it rounds out to is more riffs, and I know damn well you’ve got room in your life for more riffs, so quit yer yappin’ and dig into 1782‘s “Bloody Ritual” on the streaming doodad below in all its premiere-y goodness. It runs five minutes and it’s got like a whole day’s worth of Vitamin Nod. Take your pills, man.
How on earth did Heavy Psych Sounds get the notion to pair up these Roman and Greek titans? Well, both bands released records through the imprint last year. For the duo 1782 — which also features in its lineup Marco Nieddu, who runs Electric Valley Records — it was their self-titled debut (review here), rife with willful primitivism of its approach, drawing from VHS horror grain and a post-EWiz groove that remains well intact on “Bloody Ritual.” Acid Mammoth‘s second album, Under Acid Hoof (review here), arrived later in the year and shared some genre-on-genre aesthetic with their labelmates, both bands favoring a rawness of approach and themes centered around ritualism, darkness, the devil and all that other spooky fun stuff.
I haven’t been graced with the full release as yet, so I can’t speak to what Acid Mammoth are doing this time — please don’t go prog; sometimes I feel like everybody’s going prog — but if it’s up to 1782 to set the tone with “Bloody Ritual,” they’re setting it for all the fuzzy decay you can handle. Like body odor and liquor breath put to tape. Full on scuzz.
SIDE A – 1782 Bloody Ritual Hey Satan Witch Death Cult
SIDE B – Acid Mammoth Black Wedding Sleepless Malice Cosmic Pyres
Say 1782: “A song that goes straight to the point, the emotions of the last moments of a ritual, fuzzy and heavy riffs, the battery like a boulder that enters your mind! Bloody Ritual is the track that opens Doom Sessions vol.2, 1782 & Acid Mammoth split album!”
The Fragile came out on Sept. 21, 1999, as the third Nine Inch Nails album. I’ve owned it since that day and just not listening to it to write this piece I managed to hear a detail of light atonal guitar strumming at 2:47 into “The Day the World Went Away” that I’ve never heard before. Following the gripping pop-industrial-metal of 1994’s The Downward Spiral, which produced hits “Closer,” “March of the Pigs” and its subdued atmospheric finale “Hurt,” was no easy task and auteur/frontman Trent Reznor managed to change the entire scale and framework through which the band functioned. The Fragile is as cinematic as it is aggressive, petulant in its emotionalism at times but ferocious in its delivery — Reznor‘s line about being “Too fucked up to care anymore” in opener “Somewhat Damaged” echoes “Nothing can stop me down ‘cuz I don’t care anymore” from the prior album’s “Piggy” — and its scope was like nothing the band had done, topping an hour and 43 minutes and comprising two individual discs, ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, and 23 songs in its original incarnation. It is the kind of record that, 21 years after the fact, one might just put it on and hear something new even after listening to it enough times that it seems to run through the body at the same speed as one’s own blood.
Like most double-albums, it has material that could be easily cut for time. Some of The Fragile‘s instrumentals and experiments — beginning with “The Frail,” “Just Like You Imagined,” “La Mer” and the militaristic “Pilgrimage” on ‘Left’ and including “The Mark Has Been Made,” “Complication” and closer “Ripe [With Decay]” on ‘Right’ — might feel superfluous to a cruel editorial process, but they nonetheless serve a function in enhancing the atmosphere and underscoring the absolute all-in nature of the album itself. The rhythmic chains in “The Fragile,” the electronic zapping noises set to the rhythm of “Into the Void,” the drone that backs “I’m Looking Forward to Joining You Finally,” and the way the twisting melody of what might otherwise be a guitar solo in “Even Deeper” so perfectly suits the jazzy beat behind it; with all of these and so, so, so many more, The Fragile becomes an album of richness and detail unmatched by anything Nine Inch Nails did before or has done since. Reznor‘s work since has developed an ambient side and continued the style of hooks one finds manifest in The Fragile cuts like “The Wretched,” “We’re in This Together Now,” “The Fragile,” “Even Deeper,” “Into the Void,” “Where is Everybody,” “Please,” “Starfuckers Inc.” and “The Big Come Down” as much as those songs continued a thread from The Downward Spiral and the prior 1992 EP, Broken, and 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine. But The Fragile represents an intersection between perfectionism of craft and unmitigated mania of self-indulgence. The prior album was certainly the commercial breakthrough, but it’s The Fragile where Reznor demonstrates the truest reach of his project. Every tone, every sound, every second of it is considered.
That extends even to The Fragile‘s most cringe-worthy inclusion, which is unquestionably “Starfuckers Inc.,” which seems to be Reznor doing his best impression of then protege Marilyn Manson — who as I recall appeared in the video — and even with the would-be sexually transgressive lines, “And when I suck you off not a drop will go to waste/It really isn’t so bad once you get past the taste,” doesn’t say nearly as much as the phallus-as-weapon comment on masculinity in the prior album’s “Big Man with a Gun,” but being over-the-top with teen-angst-esque lashing out against the commercial ecosystem in which the album would inevitably reside is the point. The fact that “Starfuckers Inc.,” with its signature weighted-buzzsaw guitar chug and driving chorus, is one of The Fragile‘s catchiest songs — and that’s saying something — is not happenstance either. Like everything else around it, there’s a point being made, even if it’s more rudimentary-feeling than the spaces cast forth in “The Great Below” or “The Day the World Went Away” or some of the many transitional drones and elements that bring one song into the next throughout.
Neither is “Starfuckers Inc.” the only point of immediacy on The Fragile. “No, You Don’t” picks up from its atmospheric introduction to a straight-ahead riff and quick-arriving verse, and though it’s more mellow in its impact, “Even Deeper” is as effective as it is in no small part for its willingness to return to the chorus, likewise “We’re in This Together” and “The Fragile.” Between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, the former proves the more structured and the latter more abstract at least in the general listening experience — true enough to “left-brained” and “right-brained” — but while The Fragile essentially reads are two distinct entireties, each with its purposeful beginning, middle and end, the time it spends flitting between different sounds and styles throws open the bounds of expectation, and Reznor and producer Alan Moulder execute and bring the material to bear with such a feeling of control that, in combination with the high grade songwriting on display — the fact that many of these tracks are still pop songs — the album remains accessible even to the moderately adventurous listener.
I’ll happily argue for The Fragile as the peak-era of Nine Inch Nails. It would be 2005 before the band returned with the strikingly toothless With Teeth, and proceeded into atmospheres and craft that, while interesting for someone operating at the level of attention Reznor invariably would receive, were largely void of innovation. Nothing lasts forever. And in that regard, it’s all the more fortunate that The Fragile is as long and as comprehensive as it is — an expanded edition showed up some years ago as well — since this glut of material represents a deep place of personal expression to which even Reznor has said he’s not willing to return. Fair enough. More than two decades on, The Fragile stands out not only from its era — to wit, it came out the same day as Type O Negative‘s World Coming Down — but from what would follow in its wake. It was the end of one century and the beginning of another, and The Fragile didn’t so much paint a vision of the future as it did reconcile the present with what was about to be.
I love this record. I hope you enjoy it too.
—
Blueberry picking in Manalapan? In the back of the car, The Pecan calling out the names of different trucks, mostly accurately, and narrating the drive. “Going this way. In the grey car. Cement mixer round and round!” He’ll be three in October. There was a time we were worried about his speech. That is less the case now.
So anyway, we’re on our way to Manalapan. To pick blueberries. I don’t eat them — too much sugar — but The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan will enjoy. We found fresh strawberries last Friday after going to Space Farms, so this feels like an appropriate follow-up. Elsewhere, and not that far away, people are dying. People are marching for long-overdue freedom. We are going to pick blueberries. It is important to remember the context in which one’s actions take place.
This week was hard. Not as hard as it would be if I had COVID-19. And not as hard as it would be if I was marching for long-overdue freedom. But hard. Living in my head with Bad Voice hard.
The Patient Mrs. and I discussed this week when we might go places together again. New Jersey is starting indoor dining next week, which seems absurd and dangerous to me. I said another two weeks at least to see how things shake out before, say, she goes to a grocery store. It’s been since March, so if she’s antsy to do a thing — anything — I get it. She leaves the house plenty but doesn’t see a ton of people, and she’s much more of an extrovert than I am. The Pecan being back in part-time daycare the last two weeks (they’re off this coming week) has eased the general tension level some, but I remain an impatient, miserable shit, so I expect basically to continue ruining whatever positivity might surround me at any given point, including that emanating from my beautiful wife and child.
A contaminant, then.
New Gimme Radio show today — they’ve started calling it Gimme Metal instead of Gimme Radio, presumably because they’re branching out — Gimme Country, etc. — and I guess that makes sense. But if Gimme Radio is the umbrella under which Gimme Metal resides, the show’s still on Gimme Radio. The Obelisk Show isn’t especially metal, most of the time. I don’t know. Maybe I need to listen to more metal.
Anyway, 5PM Eastern if you’re up for it. If you’re not, that’s fine too but don’t tell them I said that. Playlist is here. Listen here: http://gimmeradio.com
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 26th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
There’s been a menacing undercurrent to Mountain Tamer‘s take on psychedelia since their inception, and it would appear that the forthcoming Psychosis Ritual will continue that thread at least in some measure. The Los Angeles trio have newly unveiled “Warlock,” track two of the seven-cut release, and the song brims with freak-punk intensity, churning riffs around wide-spaced echoes that seem to radiate ill intent, not in that hey-let’s-go-kill-ladies kind of way, but definitely in some fashion that’s up to no good. And that likes being up to no good.
Dark magic, and whatnot. I said last week when the band got signed that they’d probably have a track up to go with preorders. Look at me, seeing patterns.
Preorders for Psychosis Ritual are open and available through Heavy Psych Sounds, and the album has been confirmed for a Sept. 25 release date, which also happens to be my wedding anniversary. Guess it’s a Friday this year. In 2004, it was a Saturday.
Album cover and details came down the PR wire:
Heavy Psych Sounds to announce MOUNTAIN TAMER brand new album PSYCHOSIS RITUAL – presale starts TODAY!!!
Today we are extremely proud to start the presale of the MOUNTAIN TAMER brand new album PSYCHOSIS RITUAL !!!
Psychosis Ritual is the sum of Mountain Tamer’s first decade of exploration into the psychedelic arts. The album takes the band on a journey through the occult rhythms and tones of worlds forgotten. Each track is a new chapter of Mountain Tamer riffing their way into uncharted territory. For this ritual, you are the sacrifice…
Mountain Tamer is Andru Hall (Guitar/Vocals), Casey Garcia (Drums), and David Teget (Bass). Psychosis Ritual was recorded and mixed by Salem’s Bend guitarist Robert Parker, with mastering by Mike Tarsia at Sigma Sounds Studios. This recording is the most cohesive and lucid experience Mountain Tamer has yet to offer.
The album artwork by photographer Dillon Vaughn and tattoo artist Derek Pratt only adds to the singular vision of Psychosis Ritual by providing beautifully lysergic visuals that are inseparable from the music itself.
Californian sludge aggressors Worship will issue their second full-length, Tunnels, on July 17. “Without” is the third single from the album to make its way to the public ahead of the release — handled directly by the Salinas (about an hour south of San Jose, near-ish to the coast) trio — and in following the title-track and “Searching for Light,” it brings a particular kind of angularity and tonal weight that my East Coast ears can’t help but relate to Swarm of the Lotus. This is a comparison I make neither lightly nor often, but while Worship touch on post-metal ambience in “Tunnels” itself and “Searching for Light” resolves in blastbeats and a charging insistence of riff, “Without” — premiering in the video stream below — brings apocalyptic chug and vocal intensity to bear in repetitions that feel like punches to the side and the harshness of the presentation overall, yeah, that takes me back.
Maybe Worship know that band and maybe they don’t — it’s not impossible since they were on Century Media for a hot minute there, but Neurosis and Converge also make sense as common root influences — and as the three tracks show together, the entirety of Tunnels holds more than just aggressive, physical push in store. I haven’t heard the full record as yet, but I find the combination of weight and depth in what Worship are doing enticing enough to be on board anyway, and the idea of seeking in “Without” — a reckoning with the lack of the divinity one was raised to believe in — is especially suited to the catharsis of the resulting anger in those screams. I’m gonna try not to wax poetic about it, but hey, if you’re looking for god and you come up empty, you might end up sounding like this. Not that I’d know.
Tunnels is up for preorder now from Worship‘s Bandcamp. Do it while you’re thinking of it.
Enjoy:
Worship, “Without” visualizer
Andrew (vocals) on “Without”:
Without is about finding god. Growing up loosely Catholic I always thought the idea of a traditional god was unsettling. Once I found Slayer all bets were off and I took the “fuck god I’m an atheist” position. In my 20s I tried to fill that void with alcohol and sex but still ended up empty, even after getting sober. At 30 I started practicing buddhism. The combination of meditation and mindfulness changed everything for me and I realized that god, or whatever you want to call it, can be found in that stillness inside all of us.
“Without” from our new album coming out July 17th on streaming platforms and vinyl.
So I guess this is the episode where I play Sleep‘s Dopesmoker in its entirety. I’ve wanted to play a full record for a while now, mostly because that’s how I like listening to stuff at home, so I figured if I’m going to do a thing, I might as well go completely over the top with it, which I’m pretty sure is also what Sleep said when they recorded that album in the first place. Works for me.
Some good new stuff in there too. I like Orsak:Oslo‘s new EP a lot, and that Empress track that premiered here kind of stuck with me. The Kairon: IRSE! is weird and I find that delightful, especially coming out of Slift and Rrrags, both of which have gotten far less coverage around here than they deserve. Kind of a fucked Spring/early Summer. Sorry. Doing my best. And I figured new-ish Goatsnake and new Brimstone Coven were good to lead off. Can’t really miss, right?
But anyway, “Dopesmoker.” It’s fucking “Dopesmoker.” I don’t know if I’ll play other full albums, make it a thing I do on the show, but it was fun this time and that’s good enough for one episode.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 06.26.20
Goatsnake
Breakfast with the King
Breakfast with the King b/w Deathwish*
0:04:57
Brimstone Coven
The Inferno
The Woes of a Mortal World*
0:04:29
Orsak:Oslo
057 Passage
Skimmer EP*
0:05:16
Empress
Lion’s Blood
Premonition*
0:09:39
VOICE TRACK
Rrrags
Dark is the Day
High Protein*
0:08:01
Slift
Lions, Tigers & Bears
Ummon*
0:13:18
Kairon: IRSE!
An Bat None
Polysomn*
0:06:04
VOICE TRACK
Sleep
Dopesmoker
Dopesmoker
1:03:31
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is July 9 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 26th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Does this mean we’re going to get an acoustic recording of Trippy Wicked‘s take on Crowbar‘s “The Lasting Dose” too? Because that’d be just fine as far as I’m concerned. I went back and looked, the Trippy Wicked‘s acoustic take on Sleep‘s ultra-classic “Dragonaut” dates back to 2011, so when Chris West says he’s been meaning to properly record them “forever,” he’s at least talking about nine years’ worth of time, which certainly isn’t nothing. I’ve posted the original video under the new version at the bottom of this post, because after all this time it still brings me joy, and I’m glad they’re using the lockdown time to get these to tape, because they’re quality beyond novelty.
Here’s the news and the audio:
Trippy Wicked Launch Series of Acoustic Singles With Their Cover of Sleep’s Dragonaut
In early 2020 the band had to suspend recording of their third full length album due to Covid-19 lockdown measures. Out of work and with a lot of time on their hands they decided to start remotely recording some of the acoustic material they have worked on over the years.
This material includes some cover songs and some acoustic versions of Trippy Wicked songs.
Chris West commented:
“Both myself and Pete are currently out of work and recording these acoustic songs has been on my to do list forever so now is the perfect time. Recording the album was going well and this is a way of not losing too much of the momentum with the band. We’re gonna start putting them out as singles to start. Mostly they’re light and they’re fun and I just want people to hear them. I wasn’t sure about putting an album together at first but I think we probably will because I’m having more and more ideas around that as I work on the songs.”
The project kicks off with their acoustic cover of Sleep’s Dragonaut which is now available most places.
While to heavy rock heads he’s undoubtedly best known as the erstwhile guitarist for Queens of the Stone Age, Alain Johannes‘ career stretches back decades and has seen him work in various groups and styles, including New Wave, alternative rock, desert rock, and so on. Ten years ago, he released Spark, his first solo album, through Josh Homme‘s Rekords Records and Mike Patton‘s Ipecac Recordings, and after other self-released solo offerings and collaboration with Patton in The Alain Johannes Trio feat. Mike Patton for the 2018 single “Luna a Sol,” Johannes presents Hum through Ipecac as the third full-length under his own name and the first since 2014’s Fragments and Wholes Vol. 1, though obviously he’s done other work between. The prevailing spirit of Hum, though, is personal and intimate, and the album stretching across just 35 minutes with 10 tracks that vary in arrangement perhaps more in mood, Johannes having no trouble at this stage in his career knowing the comfort zone of his voice, and being likewise able to craft material that is expressive while still engaging for the listener.
His cigar-box guitar and finger strumming, acoustics and electrics populate the songs with due sense of personality, and as opener “Mermaid’s Scream” has echoes of Lullabies to Paralyze at the outset, backing moans and all, what unfolds from there finds a niche for itself that feels as much folk as rock, and perhaps takes some extra delight in dwelling between genres, the finger-dance-on-strings of the subsequent title-track giving a dreamy feel to go with Johannes‘ vocal melody, sounding humble but not at all simple, giving a feeling of space through echoes and backing keys or effects drone — a hum, suitably enough. As “Mermaid’s Scream” and “Hum” are the two shortest cuts on Hum at under two and a half minutes each, even as they complement each other there’s a momentum being built that hints at a straightforwardness of form that “Hallowed Bones” builds outward, taking that foundation of acoustic would-be-minimalism-if-it-weren’t-so-complex-ness and adding textures of vocal layers and string sounds.
Thinking of “Mermaid’s Scream” and the title-track as a foundation for Hum is a useful way of hearing the album, essentially teaches the listener how to hear it, setting the basis early for what stands to follow in “Hallowed Bones” and “Someone,” which returns to the acoustic guitar but keeps an arrangement of intertwining vocal layering in an almost call and response chorus, reminiscent of a contemplative Bowie but remaining smooth in the delivery. “Someone,” then is the back-to-ground reset before the more forwardly electric “If Morning Comes,” bringing percussion with it and a brooding atmosphere that, like “Hallowed Bones,” adds to its strumming rather than departs entirely from it. As the halfway point of the record, it is a well-placed turn, and the first song yet to top four minutes, which is more than enough time for it to affect its hypnotic rhythm and winding solo edge as it progresses through the wash of its second half.
I’m not sure if he’s handling all the instruments himself, but Johannes is in command of the proceedings one way or the other, and after “If Morning Comes” marches out, “Free” pulls back again to a single layer of voice over a finger-plucked guitar, like the title-track before it, effective in its shift, immediately recognizable, immediately familiar, and rife with purpose. There’s a fullness of sound that comes from Johannes‘ technique, but it creates a kind of tension as well for the simple fact that there’s so much melody happening at once. It’s serene, but it’s the serenity of looking at a river with a rushing undercurrent. You realize there’s a pull there even if on the top it seems more peaceful. So it is through “Free,” which is — if it needs to be said — gorgeous, and gives way to the darker blues of “Sealed,” vocals rougher in the tin-can-blues tradition to suit its lumbering guitar progression, centered more around the rhythm than melody. Is ambient blues a thing? It should be. And Johannes should probably spearhead it given what he does with “Sealed,” including the electrified solo ripped out in the song’s later reaches.
Time again to go to ground. “Here in the Silence” is a sweet folk melody filled out by keys or guitar or flute or whatever the hell it is, as well as the cigar-box strum, and leaves nothing unsaid after its sub-three-minute run, offering a quick reorientation before the penultimate “Nine” reframes the proceedings once again with electronic beats and Johannes‘ voice farther back in the distance, locking into what turns out to be one of Hum‘s finest hooks in the process. By the time Johannes gets there, “Nine” functions well alongside the rest of Hum precisely because it doesn’t quite fit. The album has to that point bounced back and forth through these shifts in arrangement, drawn together by mood, melody and Johannes‘ voice, and those elements are consistent in “Nine” as well, despite the difference of use to which they’re put.
“Finis” is a self-aware closer, hinting toward Americana as much as desert-delia, and one gets the sense that had he wanted it to, “Finis” could easily have worked as a harder rocker. Instead, though, it is one last return to the acoustic roots of the rest of the record, though it does flesh out as it proceeds, backing vocals and other whatnot helping to round off the record with a nod toward summary, even if the intention doesn’t seem to be to have it be complete in that regard. There are things Johannes is leaving unsaid here, and it’s not that that makes Hum unsatisfying in some way. Just the opposite. For an outing that carries itself in such unpretentious fashion, there’s an air of mystery and obscurity that comes through the atmosphere as yet another factor adding depth to Johannes‘ craft. We’re that not organic, the record would be a joke, but as it stands, Johannes is able to bring the audience with him on this apparently inward journey, and the going is all the more resonant for that.
