Niklas's thoughts

Fluisteraars – 'Kronieken Van Het Verdwenen Kasteel – III – Grunsfoort'

Stream the single here.

This is intensive and very good music with either a lot of thought behind it or a lot of luck. Fluisteraars is a black-metal band based in the Netherlands. Apparently there's something in the water over there, because the region seems to spawn some really interesting bands, for example Turia and Lubbert Das. I must confess that I'm week for bands on the Haeresis Noviomagi label. Back to the topic:

This song is eight minutes and twenty seconds long. First, an airy intro with synths that made me think of Steve Roach and suddenly: onslaught.

The cymbals and the snare drum ring out while the bass, thrumming in the background, makes for a great spine to carry the colossus that is the main guitar melody track. This is some hypnotic shit! Usually, black metal isn't this enticing. The closest I can come to thinking of another interesting band is probably Cistvaen, although the genre is filled with a lot of weird and very good bands.

I love how Fluisteraars go from super-heavy to dropping the tempo by half and then laying down some three-note acoustic nylon-stringed guitar. Then back to the onslaught.

The song is screams, howls, and I can only hope the lyrics are good because Dutch is a language I do not speak. I like both how the singer phrases and paces himself between slower, more silent moments and then going for full-tilt screams.

Nearly six minutes into the track, everything goes fairly quiet. Distant sounds are heard – some drums, some sweeping metallic swoops, water-and-glass. Then: a scream. And a trebled-up grinding guitar melody. And the drums. The freaking drums! They're great!

This is some band. Fluisteraars pull off what a lot of black-metal bands try out but fail to do: production meets arrangement bliss. Even the synths are fairly well-tempered here, which rarely is the case with black metal. Either you get zero synths, some drab organ sounds, or really fake-sounding stuff as with Lamp of Murmuur*, but that's not the case with Fluisteraars.

Damn it. I'm going to listen to Fluisteraars's latest album, Manifestaties van de ontworteling, right now.

***

• All hail Lamp of Murmuur though, that blastbeat master rules. Don't sleep on his new album that was released just a couple of weeks ago! And yes, I dig his synths too. If you can pull that shit off, by Natas, go do it as well as Lamp.

Hania Rani – 'Non Fiction – Piano Concerto in Four Movements'

Stream the album from here.

This is a collection of beautifully recorded and masterfully engineered orchestral works where the clarinet and violins are just as important as the piano and arrangement.

The songs soar, kind of reminding me of how Harold Budd handled arrangements on his masterpiece album Avalon Sutra and also of how Sigur Rós made some tracks on their latest album, Átta.

At times, songs are cinematic, like 'Non Fiction: I.II Animato', where clarinet flourishes and string plucks sound a bit Disney. As does the harp on 'Non Fiction: II.II Presto'.

Some tracks make me think of the wonderful soundtrack to the TV show Devs. The oboe and the glissando strings in 'Non Fiction: III. Misterioso' are examples of this.

I'm also reminded of Vangelis's brilliant faux-soundtrack The City, an album that makes me feel like it starts as a morning walk through a city, both living through city people and by heightening my perception of, well, everything, simply by how beautiful, experimental, and how wonderfully Vangelis crafted the album concept and music.

This is not only orchestral but ambient music. The aforementioned 'Misterioso' serves as an excellent example of what Rani does. She manages to mix the cerebral with the visceral in a grand way. I'll buy this album.