Amp – Echoesfromtheholocene

Ampbase

Amp have always created an intriguing sound world, sonics that sink deep into the psyche, always affixing a lamented eye on tattered hope. A sublime and beautiful introspection that continues on this new release.

Dwelling upon what humanity has done to this planet, Echoesfromtheholocene’s narrative is a reflective one, disillusioned with the incessant greed that continues to mess up all our futures.

Its nine tracks angeling a gauzed atmospheric where grainy texturals rub up against a lush orchestral bleed, seem to aurally describe the stormy skies, the rugged megaliths of the lyric booklet, the album’s lightly spoken / sung words pushed beneath the sonics, awaiting re-discovery.

The repeating pulse of “Time And Tides'” occult waltzing into an eddying edifice of miraged words. A sorrowful sunset spinning on neo-classical shimmers, its sketch-like drift slippery with the pebbled whorl of agitated water. A photo-sensitive sonic that brings to mind the washed-out candour of early Crescent or Movietone, bubbling up from that whirling symphonic. Its seductive verve rough, rolled into the windswept abandonment and zizzing electronics of “Remedialaction”.

An instrumental reprieve that sutures quickly into the séance of “Lament Lentement”, its spectra-scoped jangle and inky whispers nebulously enfolding. A Bells Of Atlantis bleed that glows in your head like an old memory, suddenly tunnelling in the mauled modulars and tapered transits of “CanwesavetheWorld’”, an atomising question mark gallow-dancing in endless repeats, free-falling into the unfurling drone flower of “Hollowscene”.

A beautifully strung out biosphere of vocal and refracted light, whose scenic ambience slants into the sibilant hiss of “Drift Plastic Blue”, a tidal-kissed testament to the ecological disaster we are still sleepwaking into, the teutonic tautness of Karine Charff’s repeated mantras oozing with a Nico-esque resignation as this strangled melody attempts to peek from within the scouring to be drowned back down.

“Oh look at the mess we have made”, she repeats to a destructive reverb – messy I’d say, even our blood is contaminated by micro-plastics these days. Loving the sombre tones, that lasting sigh that shimmers within every track. The hemorrhaging sayonara of harmonica on “Sparkle No” apocalyptically grasping at a thirsty drone as those diffused voices find little solace weathered in a solidifying crystal shine.

That gentle integration of disappointment brushed in the Erik Satie-like glints of “To the Night (Falls)”, its songlines unwrapping themselves in the shadow of the piano’s percussive descent. A head in hands song, reflecting on the delusion that “everything was fixable” and the lies we tell ourselves everyday as another piece of the planet silently slides from view. A lasting thought that seeps into this album’s final farewell, a dessicated lullaby of “Adieusirène” riding a dirge-like drag to oblivion.

Echoesfromtheholocene is a haunting epitaph to a future we should be actively avoiding.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-