Review & Album Premiere: Ararat, Volumen 4
[Click play above to stream Ararat’s Volumen 4 in full. It’s out this week through South American Sludge with limited vinyl to follow on Argonauta Records.]
When Buenos Aires’ Ararat rode into the light on their third album, Cabalgata Hacia la Luz (review here), in 2014, the band seemed to drift away. Fronted by former Los Natas guitarist/vocalist Sergio Chotsourian — who played bass and piano in addition to guitar — the band’s advent with 2009’s Musica de la Resistencia (review here) had been a revelation of creative expanse, finding new character in Chotsourian‘s songwriting and a denser tonality in the new trio. 2012’s II (review here) grew broader still, incorporating longer tracks for all the more a sense of immersion in the increasingly atmospheric craft. Cabalgata Hacia la Luz pulled back from that somewhat, as by 2014, Chotsourian — aka Sergio Ch. — had begun exploring the solo work that would consume much of the rest of the decade for him creatively even as another rock trio, Soldati, began to take shape and move toward their own debut. Though some of Ararat‘s songs appeared in redone form as solo pieces and vice versa, the trio that had settled on the lineup of Chotsourian, guitarist/keyboardist Tito Fargo and drummer Alfredo Felitte (who also joined Soldati for a time) seemed to be done. Obviously this impression was mistaken. Sort of.
Ararat circa 2022 is reignited as a duo, with Chotsourian and drummer Jorge Araujo as its lone occupants, and Volumen 4 marks the group’s first outing in eight years, collecting six songs across 36 sometimes plodding, sometimes reaching minutes, its ideas seeming to find a summary in the penultimate “Thor Hammer,” which layers in keyboards along with the bass and drums, and is willing to both roll out the record’s most elephantine instrumental progression and long, patient stretches of minimalist rumble. It is a different sound than anything Ararat have put forth to-date, and fair enough since it’s a different construction than the band has ever had before. Still, as “Fiebre” lurches to life at Volumen 4‘s outset backed by synth or theremin swirl before shifting into its bass/drum march of a verse, there are of course some recognizable elements, namely Sergio Ch.‘s gritty vocals, sometimes layered, and the style of the progressions he and Araujo are bringing to life. Compared to Los Natas — which was at the time the only other comparison point for Chotsourian‘s output — Ararat was more doom in tempo and attitude, but also more exploratory, with piano pieces and other experiments fleshed out as full-band realizations.
To some degree, Volumen 4 continues this ethic, but it doesn’t feel like anything so much as a new beginning. Whether it is or not isn’t something that can be known at this point, but what Ararat do as “Fiebre” chugs through its second half and the shorter, speedier “Microcosmos” sets its tinny snare drum toward more stamping punctuations is to reset the mission and general purpose of the band in the first place. Perhaps it’s fair that after eight years and a remaking of the band that Volumen 4should come across as a debut, bolstered in that regard by the willful rawness of its production and the digging-in-and-seeing-where-it-goes vibe of “Microcosmos” or the accordingly lumbering “Serpiente,” which follows.
Those who might wonder why Chotsourian didn’t simply start another project for these songs — that is, make it another band instead of calling it Ararat — might find an answer in “Serpiente,” which finds Araujo‘s loose swing connected in thrillingly tenuous fashion to the slow bass riff. Even without the additional keyboard or guitar layers of II or Cabalgata Hacia la Luz, it is like the bones and muscle of what Ararat was before, and in the second half, as the drums drop out behind the vocal echoes and standalone bassline, it’s a feel that will only be familiar to those who heard the band in their prior incarnation.
And to anyone who didn’t? One assumes it’s that much easier to make the leap into the shifts in approach without the context of the past records. “Birdy” picks up somewhat faster than “Serpiente,” playing off the alternating tempos of “Fiebre” and “Microcosmos” earlier, and features a standout riff, farther back drumming and a fuller sound with Chotsourian‘s vocals out front. Drones and more maybe-theremin return at the finish — could be a Space Echo or some such — but the shift into “Thor Hammer” is smooth enough to feel purposeful. The aforementioned pre-closer begins quiet but announces its intention toward sonic fullness with a snare hit to begin its full-on roll at about a minute in. It is as immersive as Ararat get on this fourth long-player, and that’s thanks in no small part to the keyboard line that drones out alongside the bass and drums, adding melody to the early going, dropping out as Araujo and Chotsourian dutifully march toward through the midsection, and returning for much of the second cycle until the drums also depart, leaving the bass to hold sway until it too seems to disintegrate ahead of the more immediate launch of “Mandy” at the finish.
One assumes there’s some relation to the high-body-count Nicolas Cage 2018 feature film, since Chotsourian makes a kind of sinister hook out of the repeated line “You’re about to die,” but it’s even more notable that the lyrics to the closer are in English. That may or may not be a first for Ararat — I think it is — but Sergio Ch. has always been comfortable departing Spanish periodically in his various projects, so it could hardly be called out of line. After “Thor Hammer,” the pattern of Volumen 4 would suggest it’s time for something faster, so naturally “Mandy” instead pushes deeper into the low-end abyssal zone, its lyrical threat met by a lurch that enhances the impression and feels tied to “Serpiente” earlier, capping the album without more fanfare than that, and keeping the raw sensibility that defines so much of what’s happening throughout Volumen 4 intact even while swapping one language for another in another, admittedly less subtle than some, turn.
For being relatively unexpected, this fourth Ararat LP is not at all unwelcome, and whether it’s a one-off or a new start for the band, what matters is that it continues to push against expectation for what they do. These many years later, that’s only worth appreciating more as a consistent factor in the band’s persona.
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Tags: Ararat, Ararat Volumen 4, Argentina, Argonauta Records, Buenos Aires, South American Sludge, Volumen 4
