Review Summary: An entrancing tour through the dingy alleyways of a disease-ridden city.
Successfully realizing a musical vision using the avant-garde/improvisational medium is tricky. Myles Oliver, lead figure behind the experimental King Green, clearly kept this in mind when crafting his band’s 3rd full-length outing,
Jaded Claws and Glistening Outmodes. Assembled in a basement primarily using a handheld digital recorder, the album is an intense voyage that is at once hypnotic and unsettling, challenging yet not wholly inaccessible. Here, Oliver skirts many trappings of a genre often plagued by aimless tepidity in favor of accepting cues from the masters (Univers Zero, Henry Cow) to craft an original, engaging listen.
Jaded Claws and Glistening Outmodes’ lo-fi aesthetic is certainly present, but never distracting. The distant, distorted nature of the instrumentation actually serves the music well by adding another layer of mystery to the palette. The album’s disfigured frame was born out of multiple prerecorded, improvisational sessions reorganized to form 12 songs. Oliver later integrated synthetic drums into the mix to drive the soundscape forward. At 85 minutes, the album's length may daunt some. However,
Jaded Claws and Glistening Outmodes’ unrelenting nightmarishness and clever execution make the album’s duration fairly easy to overlook.
Song pieces transition fluidly from one to another. Frantic outbursts of synthetic drums, murky electric guitars and shrieking horns readily segue into howling voids of swelling ambient textures, never shying from dissonance. Field recordings and ghostly voice samples contribute to the calculated mood swings whilst shouldering the narrative of a suitably demented, dystopian storyline. A team of guest musicians and an array of instruments (guitar, keyboard, trombone, harmonica, tank drums, saxophone, flute, household objects) help Oliver construct the eerie atmosphere.
'Wings Inspire Divinity' lies at the heart of the record and is a noteworthy highlight. Low, churning organs near the song’s midpoint recall Univer Zero’s 'Jack the Ripper', while the preceding trombone passages explore fusion territory a la
Bitches Brew. In other places (eg, 'Carried Away Unwillingly', 'Gold Leaf'), Oliver’s black metal associations are also apparent when the sprinting drums and hazy guitars align with the rasped or gurgled vocals before going their separate ways once again, like sickly strangers passing in the street.
The overarching result is a phantasmagorical venture into the abyss; an entrancing tour through the dingy alleyways of a disease-ridden city.
Jaded Claws and Glistening Outmodes is not only an artistic success, it is a nightmare worth revisiting.
