Their lineup expanded over the course of the seven years between their first EP, 2010’s The Disruption Writ, to their third and final-to-date full-length, 2017’s Women (discussed here), but the core of Ides of Gemini was always vocalist/bassist Sera Timms (later just vocals) and guitarist/backing vocalist Jason “J.” Bennett, and it was the band’s Neurot Recordings-delivered debut long-player, 2012’s Constantinople (review here) that set that pattern. Then a trio completed by drummer/backing vocalist Kelly Johnston, Ides of Gemini helped set a precedent in whose shadow much of modern ‘-gaze’-style heavy has unfolded, but kept themselves distinct in sound and exploratory purpose, and the individualism they continued to seek in their craft was evident from Constantinople onward.

It wasn’t that the band were minimalist, necessarily, but with the drums low in Chris Rakestraw‘s mix (Rakestraw also recorded; James Plotkin mastered), the band were able to give an impression of space in the mix as Timms — who carried her melodic, crooning vocal approach over from her prior outfit, Black Math Horseman; their 2009 LP, Wyllt (discussed here, also here), remains a landmark; the solo outfit Black Mare would also debut in 2013 with Field of the Host (review here) — and Bennett (who as I recall wrote for Decibel and was thereby in an echelon of cool I’d never attain) occupied the forward positions. Riff-and-voice remains a lot of the basis for what oozes out of the speakers on the nine-song/42-minute Constantinople, and the bass and drums are there in pieces like “The Vessel and the Stake,” “Slain in Spirit,” which announces its arrival with tight snaps of snare, and the cleaner-toned languid sway of the penultimate “Martyrium,” but the guitar and vocals are consistent focal points throughout.

That’s part of the challenge Constantinople seemed to be issuing, and at a time when a generation was taking shape in the heavy underground, Ides of Gemini were as brazen in their forward-looking and forward-thinking take as they were morose in tempo. Timms‘ presence and distinctive patterning, often weaving lines around Bennett‘s riffing, angular on the earlier “Starless Midnight” in a way that’s both folkish and somewhat disjointed feeling, was inevitably a major factor in the ethereal persona the album establishes, a smoky mystique wrought over the chug of “Resurrectionists,” which is stark in its first half and fuller in tone in the second, progressing on its own terms as much of the album does.

In 2012, Constantinople was decisively post-metallic as the definition of that microgenre had solidified in the mid and late aughts, but where like so much heavy-anything post-metal became a showcase for thinky-thinky-dude wankery and overly-cerebral, hyper-masculine aggro chestbeating, there’s something enticingly tentative about the way Constantinople sets forth that works against convention. It’s easy to read femininity as a piece of that, but it’s only a piece, and the lushness of melody throughout “One to Oneness,” which sets some of the album’s emptiest reaches against some of its most visceral impact and delights in the contrast, and the poetry-set-to-music vibe of the vocal delivery where sometimes it felt like an odd fit; that oddness was a part of it too. Something just a little elsewhere from the places you might expect it to go in a way that was somewhat intangible and inherently Ides of Gemini‘s own, making considerations of genre less relevant than the readily identifiable sounds the band were making around whatever tropes one might want to pick out.

And I guess their intentionality throughout Constantinople is part of what continues to stand it out as well. Even as they seemed to be plunging into a melancholic unknown, beneath that, they knew very clearly what they were about in terms of sound and style, the music backing Timms and sometimes seeming to rise up and swallow everything, as on the majestically heavy doom wrought by “Reaping Golden,” but while the tempos remained mostly on the slower end, they were nonetheless able to cast a malleable image through loud/quiet changes and a hypnotic nod-ism that emerged and spread over the album as a whole, carrying the entranced listener from one end to the other with more command than one might expect of a first LP, even if nearly half of its component tracks — “Resurrectionists,” “The Vessel and the Stake,” “Slain in Spirit” and “Martyrium” — had appeared on earlier short releases, through ground that was ready to be art-rock uneven without giving up either the heft of its tonality or the sweet severity resultant therefrom. At the time, there wasn’t a lot out there like it.

That’s less the case now, if it needs to be said, and as they haven’t done a record in seven years, Ides of Gemini are less noted for their contributions to post-heavy than they might otherwise be if they were hyper-active, touring and making records on the regular. I’m not sure that makes Constantinople any less substantial in that regard, or any less trailblazing in stylistic terms. Their 2014 follow-up, Old World/New Wave (review here), brought likewise self-awareness in songwriting and ambience, but expanded the scope of Constantinople while echoing its accomplishments, making it in some ways the band’s definitive offering, still with the trio configuration of Johnston, Bennett and Timms, before the latter would give up bass duties to Adam Murray and Johnston was replaced by drummer Scott Batiste, also known for his work in Saviours and, who like Murray, would go on to feature in the later incarnation of charred-fuckall outfit Persekutor.

The four-piece Ides of Gemini seemed primed to continue to move forward and continue evolving as Women set them forth, but it wasn’t to be. Black Math Horseman began teasing a reunion in 2019 and finally issued a return single-song EP, self-titled (review here) late in 2022, and the outward appearance was Ides of Gemini were in hiatus mode as attentions went elsewhere. That may or may not still be the case, as a couple of social media posts, including a photo of Timms, Johnston and Bennett on Instagram dated from July seemed to demonstrate proof-of-life, if not any kind of activity on the part of the band. Actually it kind of looks like they went out for a nice dinner at some point. Good for them.

Whether or not there’s ever a follow-up for Women, Constantinople occupies its own place in their catalog and in the broader sphere of atmospherically-minded heavy, and its resonance still feels as much its own as it did 12 years ago when it first arrived. I don’t know if I’d call it timeless, but it still pushes against genre convention, and it’s hard not to admire it for that as well as for the world created in the material itself.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

We’re home now. Trip of a lifetime, it turned out to be, full of the component ups and downs that, by the end of it, The Patient Mrs. and I were markedly better at anticipating than we had been before we left. Getting back to New Jersey from four weeks Budapest was a bit of culture-shock, and I’m not ready to declare us as out-of-the-woods in terms of jetlag — The Pecan woke up at 3AM yesterday, 5:45 today, so we’re getting there at least by that measure — but while traveling with a young child and an even younger little dog could be and most definitely was difficult at times, the experience was something that I think we all feel a bit richer for having, if not in actual fiscal terms. Though in that regard, I’ll note that buying like eight things at the grocery store yesterday and it costing over $100 was for sure a reminder of where I live. I’d gotten used to the idea of maybe being able to afford things, I guess, even if that too was largely an unsustainable illusion. But I drink seltzer now, so yes, my life is changed.

I think we’re pretty well resolved that, barring disaster, we’ll go back to Hungary at some point in the next few years. Maybe stay in some place where the furniture isn’t so nice. We’re hard on decor, man. We go through couches like nobody’s business. Feel a bit less guilty when they’re not new.

One of the last days we were there, last Sunday I guess it was, though it feels much longer ago already, we went to the working-class town of Miskolc — which even the prospect of seeing raised a couple eyebrows of people I spoke to about it in Budapest — and a village called Szirmabesenyő that is where my great-grandfather emigrated from in the early 20th century. We saw the old schoolhouse and houses that were probably newer, and after Ile 30 seconds of internet research in The Patient Mrs.’ part, we ended up in a catholic cemetery that had more people with last name in it than anywhere I’ve ever been in my life. They spelled it Koczán, with the accent on the ‘a’ that I guess got dropped at some point from the anglicized version. It was amazing to see, and some of the graves were maintained, kept up. Kind of a stunning revelation to think I still have family I’ve never known about in a place I’d never been. A couple of them are on Facebook, even, these mysterious Koczáns. I don’t know that I’ll reach out — “hi I’m some weirdo from far away with the same last name as you let’s be awkward!” — but finding out they exist was powerful. I hope to write more about it at some point.

Maybe next week, as I don’t have a ton planned beyond a Moonseeds review for Monday. I’ll try to get more reviews going — there’s so much to catch up on, and I’ve already got Quarterly Review stuff slated for at least seven days later this month or in September post-Desertfest NYC — and might actually be able to do it as The Pecan is in ice skating camp all week (I think), but either way, it’ll be as much as I can do when I can do it. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks again for reading and don’t forget to hydrate.

FRM.

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Tags: California, Constantinople, Ides of Gemini, Ides of Gemini Constantinople, Los Angeles, Neurot Recordings

This entry was posted on Friday, August 9th, 2024 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.