28/10/2018: Office Takeover

The wind whistles outside, inaudible behind double-glazed windows. I kick back and gaze at the screen and two million little lights shine back at me. This weekend, Elephant Towers is all but deserted, with the Grand Elephant off on a trip. The only sounds are the ticking of the orange clocks, my jovial, sanguine hums as I wash the dishes, and the cat's protestations that this isn't enough food, human.

... I wish.

All is not well. Yesterday, my computer picked up a nasty Trojan horse that turned my screen into a delightful but useless Rube Goldberg machine of error messages. I'm having to reformat my hard drive to get the damn thing working again. Worse, it was mid-backup, and the syncage wasn't quite finished, so some of my data may well be corrupted even there. The brackish white water of the pond outside is attracting some unseasonably late mosquitoes, and the quiet keeps being interrupted by next door's dog, Valdez - a schnauser, but you wouldn't think it from the way he squeals like a great big hog - and by some guy revving his car out front, a custom job with a ton o' chrome.

I need to get out of the house. Not like my PC's moving any time soon. And, what the hell, I could use a paradigm shift.

I put down the Argos catalogue I've been idly leafing through and step out for a walk. It's brisk outside - temperatures in London aren't forecast to hit single figures - but I've long been blessed with the gift of cold resistance,

I miss the Grand Elephant, in whatever far meadow he's off to. I know he'll be back soon, but we are kin, and the household hasn't been the same without him. As his representative online, though, I have to hold the line in the meantime, stand under the banner and make sure I'm one of the fierce as opposed to the dead.

It's a dark and dangerous vigil at times. Dark powers wait at the edges of my perception, ready to walk, crawl, or even flow into our reality at the slightest hint of weakness (or failure to release interesting new music with creativity and heart). They whisper in their mother tongue, asking me why I'm being so bloody weird this week, what's happened to the completely serious Trunk that probably existed at some point.

I look back at them and it's like staring into a fractal mirror.

"Because," I say, "I felt like trying to squeeze as many band names as possible into 500 words of prose, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

They hiss and contort in shock and fear. "How many did you get?"

"23, I think." I smirk. "And I wonder if you can spot them all."

"You've a tricksy spirit", snarls their leader, a coiling mass with a face made of rocks: nine stones, close and jostling for position.

"Maybe so," I retort, "but that's 25 now."

Status Update

See above.

Review Roundup

Jerry Lucky likes Now We Have Power! In fact, he "urge(s) you to check them (Sanguine Hum) out."

Two more strong reviews en Francais this week: one for Now We Have Power and one for Old Town.

And yet more love for Now We Have Power comes from The Prog Report: "the type of progressive, thoughtful, inventive music that I think the world needs right now."

Last but by no means least, the hardworking folks at DPRP have given Arms Open Wide an 8.5!

21/10/2018: All Hallows' Elephant 2018

We're coming up, ladies and gents, to the darkest, strangest time of the year. A time when all the spirits and spectres of the underworld rise up and roam the Earth, tracing unknowable patterns in the ether as they move, unseen but felt, through mortal headspace.

That's right, it's All Hallows' Elephant!

Wooooo!

All Hallows' Elephant is a festival of spooky music which is entirely legally distinct from a certain other celebration of spookiness coming up in just over a week. How does one celebrate All Hallows' Elephant, you ask? Why, with a carefully curated selection of BEM's very spookiest tracks, of course! And yes, some of these picks may seem a little left-field at first, but bear with me. I can explain. I think.

The Black Box Society

What better way could there be to kick off such a spooky episode than with something from Confound and Disturb? It's right there in the name, people. Rob Ramsay is a master of the unsettling and the uncanny, and all this talk of black boxes does absolutely nothing to reduce my pre-existing paranoia about sealed containers, black or otherwise.

Discord (Domestic Policies)

Ah, the scariest monster of them all... The News.

Don't let the major key and ostensible cheeriness deceive you. There's something thoroughly weird going on in the background of this song that stops you from relaxing. There are moments, especially towards the end, when that weirdness threatens to break through, but, like any good horror movie, the tension lies in not letting the monster surface fully, in building the anticipation of what lies beneath.

Even Then We're Scared

It would be absolutely criminal to leave Mr Slatter off this list. In Happy People, he sheds life on a distinctive fear of his own: fear of this strange phenomenon we laughingly call existence, of whatever the hell our place is in the world and how we're meant to cope with it. That, to me, is spookier than any ghost or goblin.

Save Me From The Rain

Konchordat's forceful, near-apocalyptic tone has wonderfully grim overtones of the dark and dangerous - granted, intimidating might be a better word for this than spooky, per se, but it still feels to me like it's in the spirit of All Hallows' Elephant. And the album cover of Rise to the Order evokes Pyramid Head, one of the best-known and scariest creatures in popular culture, so that's a point in its favour.

Bedhead

Now We Have Power is... it's, um... it's been spookily well-reviewed? Okay, look, I know these connections are getting a bit tenuous, but, honestly, you'd be amazed at how hard it can be to work to this theme even when you're working with all music, let alone when you're restricted to the releases of one smallish independent label. It was this or the Monster Mash. You don't want me to post the Monster Mash, do you?

Status Update

Summer is over, much as the weather will try to convince you otherwise. It's quiet here at Elephant Towers. No new releases on the immediate horizon for now; this is a time of rest and scheming for us. You're safe.

For now.

Wooooo.

Review Roundup

A trio of reviews for you this week: Echoes and Dust with a positively glowing review of Dial, neoprog.eu with an impressive five stars for Now We Have Power (and hopefully some fitting commentary, but my French is rather rusty), and DPRP imploring you to give Suite for Piano and Electronics a spin.

14/10/2018: War and Music

We opened preorders recently for The Great War, the sophomore album from industrial rock artist Saul Blease. To be released on November 11th, the centenary of the end of the titular war, it's an expansion on a previous project to produce one piece of music for each year of the war, with new material to form a full-length album.

World War I, arguably the first modern war and certainly one of the ugliest, claimed around forty million lives in a protracted, bloody stalemate, collapsed four empires, and laid the groundwork for an even larger, deadlier conflict two decades down the line. Yet it has served as the basis for a huge amount of popular media, including a surprising amount of music. From Sting to Metallica to Coldplay (no, really), the Great War has been the subject of songs in almost every conceivable genre and style.

But all this raises a pretty big question: how do you turn one of the most horrific episodes in human history, a four-year slogfest with no real long-term winners, into something people want to listen to?

I think about this question a lot. As the centenary of the war draws closer, there's been a notable uptick in media based on it, and, while I like to think you can make good media out of anything with enough creativity, World War I in particular strikes me as challenging. As I'm sure many of you did, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for school, and, while it was a powerful book, I wouldn't exactly call it entertaining. More recently, the game Battlefield 1, the confusingly-titled fifteenth installment in the series, dodged the question by focusing on lesser-known theatres of war, staying away from the trenches. Is it actually possible to turn the Western Front into something you can enjoy?

Yes. Absolutely.

The Great War uses its medium to its advantage. Industrial rock is the perfect genre for one of the first truly industrial conflicts: World War I involved mass production and mechanization on scales never seen before, and even the conflict itself was often described in mechanical terms, a vast, uncaring machine that swallowed up millions in the service of its purpose. So music as huge as this - deliberate and monolithic and best played very loud - really couldn't be more appropriate for the subject matter.

It doesn't neglect the human element, though. One of the main narratives surrounding the war is that of brave, heroic soldiers caught in the machinations of generals and politicians. On this album, the vocals play the part of these "lions led by donkeys", and Blease doubles down by keeping them almost trapped in the mix. They're often distorted or drowned out by the titanic drums and guitars, conveying the sense of, as the song titles would have it, 'Valiant Hearts' swallowed up by the 'War Machine'.

At points, though, individual moments of humanity take the spotlight. 'Angel of Mons' refers to the mythical appearance of angelic forces appearing to fight alongside the British during the Battle of Mons, but it's the penultimate track, 'Hellfighter', that really shines for me. The American 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the Harlem Hellfighters, saw more action and suffered more casualties than any other American regiment, and were heavily decorated for bravery and tenacity in battle, and the song that honours them is just as gritty and desperate as it should be. As a primarily African-American unit, the Hellfighters had to deal with discrimination by their command staff as well as enemy action, and their valor even in the face of this adversity deserves an arrangement as powerful as this one.

I think it'd be fair to say that The Great War proves, to me, that World War I can inspire more emotions than existential despair (though there's nothing wrong with that once in a while). This album has it all: awe, fear, and even a little bit of hope.

Give it a try.

Status Update

Now We Have Power is out now on CD and as a digital download. Much praised by critics and fans alike, we highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

Elsewhere in our roster, Orange Clocks have released a live album, of all things: Tope's Sphere 2 in its entirety, as performed at Sonic Rock Solstice, plus a new song, all for the bargain price of whatever you like. Check it out here!

Review Roundup

Bit of a quickfire one this week, as we've had a lot of reviews recently:

Amplified Magazine reviews Close to Vapour and A Map in Fragments.

Classic Rock Society reviews Old Town (two parts there).

Popgruppen reviews Now We Have Power.

New Boots reviews Orange Clocks at Sonic Rock Solstice.

And Jacques Becker reviews Unidentified Dying Objects, which I believe is French for Unidentified Dying Objects.