Vorare Premiere “Floodmines”; Voyeur Out Aug. 30
Posted in Bootleg Theater on August 12th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Resoundingly bleak Finnish experimentalists Vorare will release their debut album, Voyeur, on Aug. 30 through Total Dissonance Worship. The eight-song/41-minute here’s-a-carcass-style offering follows behind the Tampere two-piece of EV and EH‘s first EP, The Drainage Rituals (review here), and its willfully dreadful, abrasive sprawl codifies much of what the prior release had to offer, the band creating a sound that is as extreme as any of the most aggro heavy metals, but fits neatly alongside none of them. Crashes and punch of industrial beats meet with piercing high-pitched noise, the is-it-on ambient minimalism in the pre-swell moments of the title-track, the biting insect wash that ensues, and anywhere you try to find safe ground on Voyeur, the floor collapses from underneath. Punishing. At times genuine aural horror. Brutal in its worldmaking.
The video for “Floodmines” asks an important question that applies to the rest of Voyeur around it, which is what do you do when even the light won’t save you? Imagine yourself out for a hike on a gorgeous and sunny day. You come into a clearing from a forest of gorgeous evergreens into some tall grasses, and just as you’re thinking you’re glad you splurged for the good boots, you find two beige-cloaked figures standing completely still, staring directly at you as the wind blows by. There’s going to be a moment of panic and surprise, even before you get to fight or flight, as your brain processes what you’re seeing and interprets the utter terror of the possibilities derived from it. Take that moment, stretch it out across the entire droning four minutes of drum-backed noise and deep, deep-placed creeper keyboard or guitar — I’m not even sure what that is, but it’s there for a while in the middle of the song before it all collapses into the last drones — and then stretch it further across the rest of the record. That’s not to say it all sounds the same — there’s any number of places to start when flaying your listener’s illusions of security in this world — but “Floodmines” represents the ethic that seems to unite the material despite the different angles EV and EH (who between them have a pedigree
that includes Mireplaner, Fargue, Fawn Limbs, Positiivinen Ongelma and probably more just in the last few years) use to approach their task.
Their purposeful use of empty space throughout is a strength. Beginning with the immersive two-song salvo of “This Body Aweigh” and the already noted title-track — two of only three songs to top six minutes long; the other is closer “Barren,” which stands testament to intentional sequencing — and across the would-be-primitive-were-it-not-so-progressive dancing-in-water-with-weights-on beat pulsations and various howling musical animalia of “A Mountain Hewed of Light” and the intermittently chaotic “Tarnished Nature,” which, like the subsequent “Floodmines” feels improvised in some of its synth layers, Voyeur might periodically just blank out to silence or near-silence, and the effect can be as jarring as the high-frequency stabs that ensue all the while and seem to come even more forward on “Orifice Carver,” “They Are Here” and “Barren” on side B. It’s one of the ways in which Vorare create this unsettling space, where one never quite understands where they are or what might be coming, but the feeling of threat is the universal, whether it’s the industrial collapse of “They Are Here” or the volume trades of “Tarnished Nature” or the overwhelming feeling of burning in “This Body Aweigh” for about a minute in the first half of the song before that too caves in on itself and moves elsewhere, vocals trading between higher and lower screams and growls in the meantime. These all come together and feed the violence of the atmosphere. Clearly the dead were lucky in whatever apocalypse just took place.
But there’s life in here as well, represented not so much in the vocals that may or may not be included/needed in a given piece — singles are decent for building anticipation and spreading the word about a release, but Voyeur very much deserves to be listened to in its entirety, by those who can make it through front-to-back, anyhow — but in some of the harshest stretches of noise, as beneath the blowout vocal layers on “Voyeur,” where the synth line changes subtly to represent the foundation of craft here. That is, it’s impossible to listen to Voyeur especially after The Drainage Rituals (which was recorded after but released first) earlier this year and call it coincidence or a one-off. There is a plan at work, a style being cultivated as though from the earth and shaped into what Vorare want it to be, these discomfiting sculptures of manipulated sound. EH and EV have already begun to refine — such as the word applies — their take, and I’m not sure there’s anything anyone can do to halt that process. I’d tell you to be forewarned, but if you can dig into it, you won’t need the warning, and if you can’t, you’ve already stopped reading. So there.
Enjoy:
Vorare, “Floodmines” video premiere
“Floodmines” is the second single taken from our upcoming full-length “Voyeur”, out on August 30 in collaboration with Total Dissonance Worship. Preorder here: https://linktr.ee/vorare
CD/digital/merch:
https://vorare.bandcamp.com
Socials:
https://linktr.ee/vorare
VORARE is a fresh entity formed by two individuals destined to mold a spiritual and holistic aural and visual experience out of leanings falling to the spectrum of drone-doom, noise, industrial, and electronic music. The pair’s experimental tendencies first took shape in the form of Voyeur, that’s to be released on August 30 in collaboration with Total Dissonance Worship.
Voyeur was composed and recorded within the span of five days this January, at a snow-barred cabin in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. Due to logistics, VORARE postponed the release of the album, and compensated this delay with the release of The Drainage Rituals this May. While this later-conceived EP was deeply rooted in evolving ambiances and tonal control, Voyeur is a brutally primitive and exceedingly aggressive pathos to the point of surpassing caustic proportions.
VORARE’s leading motif is to enthrall the listener with delicate sound design and shroud them with brute force, keeping the listener’s emotions hostage while engulfing them fully with their abstract and abrasive noisescapes. Stylistically spanning from drone-doom to harsh noise and even industrial-tinged IDM, VORARE always leads with the experimentation and notion of avant-garde firmly on the forefront, from the initial instrumentation and compositions to the ultimate aesthetic.
1. This Body Aweigh
2. Voyeur
3. A Mountain Hewed of Light
4. Tarnished Nature
5. Floodmines
6. Orifice Carver
7. They Are Here
8. Barren
VORARE:
EH – EVERYTHING
EV – EVERYTHING
