Genre: Noise / Experimental / World

01 Tabernacle

02 Ultrasonic Nozzles
03 Selenium
04 Demorabilia
05 Tokachi
06 Büro Gysin

Tabernacle is a somewhat confounding, challenging beast of an album. This is not something that the listener is likely to be able to comprehend without a fair few listens, as the Scandal Trio are experts at taking familiar musical elements and combining them in exotic and bewildering ways.

First up, this is a noisy album, with lots of static and crunch. A heavily distorted bass is deployed to create washes of heavy sound that really kick some ass. Repetitive droning figures are used to powerful effect as different arrangements and layers are deployed and rescinded.

The music is inflected with sounds and samples, often with a very metallic timbre. Sometimes they sound quite musical, even voice-like, and it is difficult to tell at points whether one is listening to an industrial sample or a heavily processed organic instrument, possibly looped to increase the mechanistic inexorability of the album.

One thing is for certain: the clanking, clattering percussion is quite compelling and driving. As a whole the album moves at a gentle pace, but the percussive elements always manage to keep the momentum there, even if the music freely takes it time to work its dark atmospheric magic.

The secret surprise to this album, however, is its use of Indian influences. Tabla feature prominently in the instrumentation, but always arranged and processed in unusual ways. They lurch and clatter hypnotically, the characteristic speech of these beautiful drums transmuted into drunken, yet metronomic, song.

Against these that edgy, almost chanting bass traces out various raga-informed musical inflections, coiling and uncoiling at points like a long and deadly serpent. This is Indian classical music as you’ve never heard it, drip fed as it is through EQ-filtered post-rock drums, grinding static, and repetitive stabs of noise.

As I say, it takes a while to get used to the abrasive aesthetic of the music and its apparently shapelessness. Perseverance rewards the listener though, and there is a powerful and compelling logic to the array of timbres, melodies, and rhythms presented.

This is very sophisticated music that cleverly masquerades as noise squalls and lunked-headed beats. Stay with it and the rich melodic joys contained within will open up for your delectation, however.

On the whole Tabernacle is very well suited to trance induction and consciousness shifting. Once the ear is acclimatised to its brand of sonic razor-wire the rawness subsides into an almost soothing hypnosis. Kitch, brain-slicing drones; repetitive, deadly percussion; and (buried somewhere in there I suspect) a sardonic sense of humour all combine to make for a fascinating and very enjoyable release.