Saturday, 9 October 2010

DOOMSDAY APOCALYPSE SPECIAL – A SENSE OF FOREBODING (RETARD RECORDS)


DOOMSDAY APOCALYPSE SPECIAL – A SENSE OF FOREBODING (RETARD RECORDS)

In local scenes there are often bands of legend that seldom are heard of outside such provincial borders.  These are acts that perform against the grain, against the trend of tastes often gaining notoriety and a slender cult following of town weirdoes that not only like the band, they love the band.  In attaining such a reputation an act will earn its stripes often by upsetting more people than it impresses.  And therein lay their charm.

For Colchester and its surrounding areas we have the Doomsday Apocalypse Special.  And they are a truly wonderful act even if they are too frightening to approach.

The word was always that this band was pure early Sonic Youth with a sound so heavily drenched in distortion and feedback there wasn’t really room for anything else.  Bear in mind this is a duo carrying the names Brockerly Moonface and Jabberwocky.  Without effort these two could easily be characters or the focus of a Harmony Korine feature.

On that note A Sense Of Foreboding is not as we know and love them.  Beginning as little more as the pulsing score to Day Of The Dead audio this twenty two minute exploration is a more ambient rendering than full on feedback jazz.  In execution it shakes the confines but does not necessarily destroy it.  And in that effect it proves quite appropriate to entitle the piece A Sense Of Foreboding as anticipation runs rife in the expectation of something incendiary.

Whether it by fortune or design the set makes me think of mechanised adaptation of Earth that is heavy on drone and cunning atmospheric.  Then as the movie samples change so does the guitar sound as things get stretched out and more refined.  As the instruments creek and groan with a whale sound it does feel like a call for help.

As my stereo speakers continue to vibrate I think back to gruesome times, ones where my hum would antagonise as much as this one.  It’s an alien language impossible to decode for most.

Gradually the slow moving object succumbs and dies having taken much of the audience with it.  Jet propelled engines make ears pop less.  The end of the world is never pretty, does not have a beat.  No encore.

And to tie a bow in proceedings we get an aggressive sample/quote from Happiness saying how we are going to get fucked so bad we’ll be coming out of our ears.  Most appropriate.

You can’t catch lightning in a broken bottle.

Thesaurus moment: contaminated.

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