SIGHTINGS - Future Accidents

Released on Our Mouth, the label run by Brian Sullivan (voice and guitar of Mouthus), this vinyl record by the Brooklyn trio confirms, indeed, a state of health that's not exactly optimal. Two sides crammed full of cacophony, feedback, rickety-elastic bass figures, toxic vocals, murky atmospheres and rhythmic structures that resemble malfunctioning gears.

Compared to “City Of Straw”, there are only four tracks here, on average longer, peaking with the nearly twenty minutes of the closing track. But these more stretched-out compositions (in constant motion, since they lack any real center of gravity other than the near-instantaneous transformation of destructive impulses) seem to magnify enormously the uncertainties that were already evident on the previous record. The subdued post-industrial scenery of the very long “Public Remains” reveals a sly taste for sinister, “elusive” sound-painting, a will to weave sonic webs that, in this case, lean decidedly toward pure and simple abstraction. This vicious circle of echoes, layering, loops, drones and whatnot could go on forever, although by the halfway mark a certain fatigue does start to set in.

This long immersion in a parallel world made of mystery and dismay still remains the most interesting moment of an album that, for the rest, gets lost in the mere repetition of ideas expressed elsewhere with far greater conviction. So here's “To The World” (a noisy, disjointed pachyderm, wandering between bristly guitar exhalations and cavernous bass rumbles), “The Knotted House” (a lopsided dance that seems to aim for a degraded hypnosis) and, finally, the derelict free-noise of “On A Pedestal”.

In short, it's time to recharge the batteries.

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28/05/2011