PURE GROUND - Giftgarten

“Let it rain forever, forever never end”. Brandon Lee was wrong. San Francisco, September 4, 2016, 16 degrees Celsius. The second full length by the American duo Pure Ground came out just three days ago on the Italian label Avant! Records, in a joint venture with the German Sleepless Records, but its sound evokes everything except sunny beaches and mild weather. "Giftgarten" brings us back to the gloomy world of Greh and Jesse Short, the former being the founder of the underground label Chondritic Sound, from which their venture began back in 2012, when the duo were peddling a still-raw, rather bland minimal synth sound, far removed from their current one. First came the attention of genre webzines, chief among them the Canadian I Die, You Die, and then the tour, alongside Front 242, High-Functioning Flesh and Youth Code, did the rest.

It's been barely a year since the release of Standard Of Living, a crystal-clear, almost brazen tribute to their idols The Klinik and Portion Control, but the American duo haven't slowed down in the face of the widespread acclaim that's taken them onto many European stages, including in Italy - quite the opposite, in fact. Their name has started circulating in our country and beyond, leading them to put together some very interesting mixes that showcase, on one hand, their love for minimal techno sounds, and on the other, their passion for Ebm classics, the latter produced for Futurismi. It was therefore reasonable to expect a new release from them in short order, and here comes "Giftgarten", an album that marks a partial turning point in a career where the word maturation, in its most positive and genuine sense, has always been a constant fixture in their minds.

No longer, then, a kind of structural simplification of the lesson taught by the names already mentioned, but more going on than in the past, which makes "Giftgarten" a less monolithic record and, for that reason, less organic than its predecessor. Hitting play, this is immediately clear. "Before Us", accompanied by rather cryptic lyrics, is the perfect meeting point between the lesson of Absolute Body Control and a certain classic post-punk, something entirely new in their style, but what strikes you is the austere, clean vocal tone, free of artificial echo. It's then left to the following "No Passage" to recall their previous album, with a very simple, rounded and effective beat that never indulges in syncopation of any kind, as essential as it needs to be.

Another track with a post-punk flavour is "The Great Becoming", with its clearly 80s stride and a drum machine used by hundreds of groups before them, itself a symbol of a maturation that has broken down the tight musical boundaries of their full-length debut, without losing touch with their points of reference. The rest of the album doesn't fail to tinge everything it touches with black, with sinister, almost gothic landscapes in "No Voice Of Angels", a martial track in which the heavily effected vocals are subordinated to its atmosphere, leaving no hope whatsoever of reaching some non-existent Paradise. “No voice of angels, no celestial hymn, no trumpets sounding, only the diminishing hum of death”. No hope, no fear, as Vomito Negro used to sing.

"Still" is the only track that disrupts the perfectly rigorous geometry of the shapes drawn by the American duo, a more syncopated and abstract episode, in which the echo of Klinik's "Fever" strongly resounds, while the remaining tracks follow directions already explored in the songs discussed above.

Certainly not a revolutionary record, but no less deserving of the attentive listener's notice for that, who will find in Pure Ground a rather varied, carefully crafted, deliberately retro sound. Not a sterile homage at all - quite the opposite. The American scene needs projects like this one, and so do we.

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05/09/2016