GREGOR SAMSA - 55:12

It may seem like an obvious play on words to talk about the transformation of a musical form – in this case the most expansive and emotional strain of post-rock – when discussing a band going under the Kafkaesque name of Gregor Samsa, but in truth few other expressions better capture the many-sided work of this quartet from Richmond, Virginia. After two EPs and a handful of collaborations (most recently last year's split with Red Sparrowes), the band tackles its first full-length effort, titled with nothing more than two numbers: "55:12". On it, the band — already noted for its ability to rework the sometimes elusive abstractions of "post" genres with an oblique, passionate touch — delivers a splendid confirmation of its talent, blending its original traits with different, though not ultimately so distant, styles across a broad musical spectrum that tends to combine the most expansive side of Mogwai with elements of the early-90s 4AD and Creation sound.

The record opens straight away with the hazy, tangled weave of "Makeshift Shelters", whose drawn-out stillness is set against the soft interplay of Champ Bennett's and Nikki King's voices, which then give way to distant, almost imperceptible frequencies. A distant, opaque perspective also marks the incipit of "Even Numbers", in which, however, a hint of rhythm can be glimpsed, a denser and more concrete sound, easily read as the prelude to a swell in classic emotional post-rock style — one that indeed doesn't take long to arrive within the track's ten-minute span; but just when it seems the song is about to unfold along an already familiar script, the pace suddenly slows, once again leaving room for the dialogue between the voices, suspended over minimal, elusive atmospheres, before the further guitar-and-orchestral build that is concentrated in the final ninety seconds alone.

At this point, one might even think that the stylistic signature of this "55:12" lies solely in translating, into a more melodic key — one that's listenable and at least somewhat closer to song form — the sweeping crescendos of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and their followers; instead, the crooked piano that opens the splendid "What I Can Manage" brings the sound back to the delicate terrain of hushed, ethereal romanticism on which the rest of the record will settle, masterfully alternating meticulously crafted passages with fine slowcore leanings and more complex harmonic openings, ones that even call to mind shoegaze sensations and subtly psychedelic touches, all polished off with a light, refined touch capable of defusing — reducing to a minimum — rough edges that have by now become all too predictable.

After the brief instrumental interlude "Loud And Clear", "These Points Bilance" stretches the delicate slowness of the compositions to the extreme, in what, structurally, could be an angelic ballad worthy of Mojave 3, here recast in codeine-esque cadences and with an approach that recalls the most ethereal Low. A few sudden rough edges resurface in "Young And Old", a track that first coils in on itself in a flourish of strings, culminating in a pained but short-lived peak of impetuous guitars, before the tangled thread of its flow fades into a soft orchestral coda. But, after "We'll Lean That Way Forever" — another brief atmospheric link, marked by small sinister noises and a broken, evocative voice over sound fragments assembled in reverse — the sublimation of the Gregor Samsa sound arrives with the closing "Lessening", a true manifesto of an enchanting sound that fills with emotion the suspensions in time, sometimes quite long, between one note and the next, while once again the alternation between male and female vocals (both always soft and dreamy) stands out now against an unreal underlying stillness, now against cathartic orchestral passages, now even against impulses barely held back by a melancholy that is latent yet subtle in how it reveals itself.

The band's fundamental core remains, as ever, that of romantic post-rock, as already shown in its previous releases, but there's no doubt that the suggestions found on this "55:12" are many: from the elusive shoegaze vein that surfaces here and there, to the slowcore contaminations and the floating psychedelic traces that call to mind, among the best and freshest expressions of their respective genres, Mimi Secue and Timonium.

"55:12" ultimately comes across as a fascinating work, in which can be found all the structural, conceptual and emotional elements of the touching abstraction of post-rock from recent years, pleasingly hybridized according to a delicate, ethereal introspective sensibility that, with no claim to stylistic absolutism, manages to coherently embrace intuitions drawn from expressive forms that are, among themselves, even quite different.

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25/04/2006