Genre: Dark Ambient / Shoegaze

Track Listing:

01 Blackhunters
02 In The Breathing Forest
03 Vampyr
04 Taming The Beast
05 Hunting Demons
06 Stranger Than The Sea


How often we read the same praise whenever we check new releases: “This is something really different, something you haven’t heard before in music, the reinvention from a genre!”... and we trustworthy believe it and follow this, just to find later that it was a lie and there is nothing different or relevant about it,  it was a lame review critic made just to cheat and coax us into buying what doesn’t deserve to be bought. I guess our opinion it’s pretty much useless and pointless if we try to disfigure the facts whether we are music lovers or critics, whenever all this results in an oxymoronic conjunction anyway.

On the other hand our subjective insight about things only serves as a bridge that gives on what the music from a release is about, a glimpse, a pitiful notion at most. Even if we remain faithful to the “truth” in order to capture the essence from something we listen, it is nothing but a personal rationalization from it.  The question that immediately follows is what makes something relevant and representative for us? What really makes its excellence? Perhaps the answer lie not really comfortable for the rational perfectionist or the overly transcendental idealist as I think this all have to do with feelings and shock mainly instead of reason. What we ultimately like and love (everything related with art in general) is all what we feel that ultimately convulses our inner self, whether it is from a pacification that comes in terms of joy, tranquillity and sensuality or just an awakening from our most virulent and obscure states within ourselves: Anger, violence, morbidness and madness. Once awakened, these states lead us to our inner paradises and our most beloved infernos. The result from this shock, from this spiritual shake is what ultimately conforms our impression and final verdict over the things we like. Music touch our instincts more than our minds, music calls for the beast inside us, delighting it with pleasure and pain, the perennial dichotomy is forever opened and resolved through it.

Thisquietarmy CD lie there, the lustrous and subtly disturbing cover with a masked gentiluomo dressed in Venetian carnivalesque attire looks back at me. The cover calls my attention but I hesitate to give my listening revere as I’m kinda skeptic on first impressions, plus knowing it was a band influenced by post rock makes me think of all those modern hipsters playing their snobbism on high scale so I play the man fatale for the moment. The former creator of the band is someone called Eric Quach, currently part from a second generation of bands influenced by Slowdive and Mogwai, both bands I do respect in their own terms. Thisquietarmy results to be a sideproject after a previous main project entirely based on post rock experimentalism called Destroyalldreamers founded in 2002. The whole thing starts to become interesting. Thisquietarmy originates in 2005 as recourse to experiment more freely, giving post rock the way to expand into uncharged territory. This is mere rhetoric in truth as the band rarely charges into the dark side as a Quixote searching for fights with the ghosts from the Dark ambient genre and the disturbing circumstances exposed in Drone layers. “Blackhunter” is an EP that demarks the fifth manifestation after a now fully productive career, four albums in three years.

There is something-something about this band that needs to be shared and told, the hybrid created here is quite different and unique, the synthesis formed from the union of dark ambient and shoegaze actually impresses with its compositional value and adventurous sound exploration. The guitar pedal effects and sampling loops the band is able to create a distinctive universe of sound, something beautifully eerie. The guitar serves not the mere position of an instrument; it stands as the parameter that decides the proportions and textures from the work, a centre which plays the role of an orchestral sonority, a simple atmospheric background detail and ultimately the melodic lines that conceives the body work. The drones marauder just like ghosts around the guitar play, adding a tension that dissolves any sight from the etherized vision that shoegaze may bring to, the result configures a twilight atmosphere, the union from ecstasy and darkness. The nebulous distension from shoegaze finally transforms in a dense foggy veil while the guitar effects fuse with the drones and creates cascades of layers dissolving into space.

“Black hunters” for example opens slowly, and increases its resonance until it acquires the dimension from some sort of orchestra reverberating immensely and the echoes from his instruments randomly sliding its tones out occasionally, all these effects suited into a lentissimo movement that creates vertiginous sensation on the listener. Tensions increase as the twilight zone described by the music opens. The track set was constructed as a sequel that follows a premeditated sequence, sort of a thematic unfolding, developing a theme that is at times eerie, at times melancholic and charged with a strange euphoric power that spreads its sequels all over the cacophonic cloud of fog that conforms the work’s sonority. “In the breathing forest” we can appreciate the incredible diversification added, atmospheres take prevalence, drones sublimate the guitar role and everything comes as just one wall of sound that comes and goes, bringing mystery and a crawling feeling of loss. “Vampyr” is rather dark, the fog dissipates into night. Very smart use from drone layers and guitar effects is appreciated, showing the author’s influence and vast experience taken from the shoegaze genre in order to create a macabre atmosphere that generates a completely twisted and superior original quality result.

Here is where Thisquietarmy shows its teeth, forming the post rock genre to the dark side. Progression is constant, pieces evolve into dissimilar structures, atmospheres dissolve into its contrasts and vice - versa, a nice amalgam of variations occur almost unnoticeable and then rhythm appears for the first time as an unexpected visitor returning us to post rock realms. If the previous song is the epitome of hybridization next set is a show of categorical return to obscure prog-rock adventures, submerging us in a sea of mystery imbued in helium, the following songs share a common character with this song, downtempo based, slowed down but with an addition of percussion that gives a concise form. Spacey atmospheres takes place, post rock meets psychedelia and drone ambient remains as a loyal friend that adorns its backgrounds.

First comes the bad news. The programmed drum set that first appears in “Vampyr” is really annoying, its way too synthetic and flat and never truly fits with the atmosphere even though everything is made for it to accommodate. Only track I truly defend its use and arrangement is over “Taming the beast” which is by far the heart and soul of this release (after comes “Vampyr”). The good news, Thisquietarmy has created a valid darkened and pale post rock version. I must say this remains as post rock mainly as the author uses Dark ambient drone for giving tones, atmospheres and effects that serve the role of the aural thematic, but the methods and arrangements, the sonic strategy to create the atmospheres bases is premise in post rock mainly as it is the camp where the author comes from. It’s clear that the vast experience inherited from his work in this genre gave him the ability to create the Thisquietarmy world, a shady and melancholic vision, vividly cinematic and authentically progressive. My opinion may be senseless for you, but not for me, my dear reader.