Mark Holub – Anthropods

Discus

For Mark Holub‘s latest album and his first for Discus, he has expanded on his usual collaborative numbers and put together his first group as bandleader since starting Led Bib twenty years ago.

Here, the accent is more on his songwriting rather than the more collaborative efforts of Led Bib, but allows the chosen players to lend colour and texture to his compositions, all of which are laced with the most intricate and suggestive drumming.

Choosing the right players is clearly important and the ability of the string players to alternately scour and sweep while the reeds are easing and cajoling. It makes for a varied and complex journey that moves from space and freedom to more structured rhythmically dynamic numbers, but all the time keeping the listener on their toes.

The thrum of the cello and the scrape of the violin are pretty and puzzling on opener “Sea”, while the drums gently tumble and the cymbals shiver. It’s itchy and nervy compared to the slow salve of the reeds, and this dichotomy runs through quite a lot of the album. There is an incredibly addictive refrain on “Forest Capers”, but it is slightly meandering with the drunken horns adding a certain playfulness. Tension builds as it progresses, with all the players squeezing their way in around the drums.

It is a rollercoaster tracklist veering from the bass-led discordant lullaby “Messy To Me”, with its romantic and frantic strings chasing one another around the drums, to the slow melancholy sweep of “The Bells”, with its drones evoking a misty post-battle landscape; a comedown vibe with a ridge of solidity that offsets the melancholy and scraps with the surge and clash of drums.

It is interesting watching how the more open pieces slowly unfold; the lengthiest track here, “For Charles”, is more of a soundscape with the punctuating drums often the only dynamic thing, with other elements moving slowly, searching in spaces and shadows for the ghosts of memories and the textural sensations. Comparatively, “One Way” has a strangely ungainly groove and each of the players seems to revolve at different orbits around the endlessly inventive percussive textures.

By the time we more through more playfulness and the almost neo-classical unfurling of “Pumpkin Patch”, it has been quite and dramatic and hugely entertaining trip; at times disorientating, but always welcoming and certainly irresistible to follow. The drums are the glue, but the deft touch of the other players makes for a true collaboration.

-Mr Olivetti-