Rothko – Blood Demands More Blood

Trace

It is clear from the title of the album, the tone of the cover imagery and some of the track titles that Mark Beazley and Michael Donnelly may not be treating us to another blissful series of plangent, bass heavy soundscapes. Blurred images of police lines and war shots offset by high-class partying are set against a blood-red sky. With titles such as “May 3rd 1979 (When Evil Took Hold)”, which is the date Margaret Thatcher came to power, and “May 2nd 1997 (The End Of Truth)”, when Tony Blair became British prime minister, Mark is clearly still working through some frustration at the legacies that these two leaders have left behind. It isn’t easy listening at all, uneasy listening at best and at times a furious onslaught of noise that catches the habitual Rothko listener a little unawares.

On the whole, gone are those resonant bass tones that we have come to expect from Rothko albums. Even last year’s collaboration A Young Fist Curled Around A Cinder For A Wager with Johny Brown found his at-times grim tales of life in north-east England underpinned by some delightful sounds — but that seems to stop here. Opener “May 3rd 1979” is introduced with blasting waves of static and deep, scouring harmonic feedback that seem to drift around us like a cloud of mustard gas. There are distant distorted and broken electronic beats, and the whole thing stinks of slow-motion horror; the kind of sounds that would accompany post-war footage of a blasted city, crumbling and ruined in a baking desert sun.

In fact, this widescreen sun-bleached imagery and a sense of creeping dread overwhelms a lot of the album. “One Million Drops Of Death In The Sea” sounds like its title. Empty coastal buildings, ruined lift shafts echoing with the recent clamour of war, broken windows overlooking the relative calm of the sea, everything scorched and sunblasted with memories of Morse code messages riding over the waves never to be heard, stuck in a kind of orbit of torpor. The static-filled soundscape leaves no room at all. Usually with Rothko, there is space and time for us to reflect and bask in those languid bass passages; but here we have no such luxury. The sound is full to bursting and I can only imagine that when this was mixed, the needles were in the red most of the time.

In “For The Disappeared” we hear the trademark bass for the first time, bringing some much-needed movement to the cloying atmosphere — but it is then wiped out and disappears back into the chaos. There is a submerged four-note keyboard figure that sounds lonely and isolated, and as the dust settles, the whole track seems to sway as if caught in some gentle waves. Maybe this is an elegy to bodies sitting on the ocean floor, their only movement caused by the motion of the tides. There really isn’t much let up here. Grainy visions and circular feedback, a gradual swell of bells and uproar inform “What Happened To Hope”, as if we are drawing closer to some disaster, the sounds of emergency services filling our heads as visions of destruction swarm through our senses. It is short and remarkably sour, but the next track follows in the same sort of vein, testing the listener, gauging how much of this we can take. Like visions of famine and torture broadcast on the late-night news, it is compelling and at the same time uncomfortable.

“May 2nd 1997” has an aquatic feel: the languid movement of an enormous jellyfish, the clanging of ships resonating through the water, the distant sounds of radar. Graham Dowdall (AKA Gagarin) assists on this track, so maybe his influence and the brief but necessary reintroduction of the bass allows a little light in, and the atmosphere lifts just enough for the listener to breathe again. The let up is brief and our ears are rinsed again and again by the excoriating feedback and dense watery limbo on “There Is No End To War” and shrieking strings on “The Peace Process”, an ironic title given the sounds produced. The final track, “Surface For The Last Time”, has extra manipulations from old friends BLK w/BEAR and does lend some balm to our troubled souls after the prior onslaught, the drifting calm after the storm. The dissonance and drama is replaced by a sepulchral tone, but the calming air has bomb blasts and electronic screams drifting in the background. Mark seems unable to let it settle into pleasantness, like some bad taste in the mouth that you just can’t shake.

This is Rothko at their most vicious and angry. Words aren’t necessary when you can prepare something as difficult and texturally awkward as this. It is a thrilling but supremely uncomfortable ride, and perhaps this is what Mark wants. It is the most extraordinary volte face, but one that perhaps he needed to make, to show the band is still alive, still vibrant and still relevant. On the strength of this, there is no doubt.

-Mr Olivetti-