MJ Guider – Sour Cherry Bell

Kranky

There is something about MJ Guider‘s sound that puts her perfectly at home on Kranky. There is a sense of drifting, of distant sounds clouded in fogs of reverb that make everything feel limitless. But there is also an intensity to the metallic rhythms that put you on guard. Sour Cherry Bell is the follow up to 2016’s Precious Systems and continues Melissa Guion‘s exploration into the alchemy of various influences into her unique style.

Her voice drifts from the speakers like a reverbed dream on the opener “Lowlight”, but is set against dusty chords, ancient and rusting. The sounds move slowly and seem to decay right there in front of you. There is a reminiscence of some of Labradford‘s early form, with a kind of brooding ambivalence that is entirely with its own agenda, overlooking the listener. This is music that you take as it comes, because there is no room for fools.

There is something about the metallic, industrial rhythm of “The Steelyard” that fleetingly brought to mind Succour era Seefeel, but it is slower and there is an aura of shadowed drone. There are vocals here, but they are utterly incoherent and at times it is as if somebody working in a huge factory is trying to tune an old radio into a classical station. As for the bass, that could be floor shuddering if you didn’t like your neighbours.

This merging of styles is rather good; there is an early goth feel to the drum machine on “FM Secure”, but where the rhythm has some structure, everything else is amorphous, even the vocals that slip and slide around the beat and what sounds like a choir of dark angels murmuring in the distance — but it could be anything. That amorphousness continues in the throb of “Body Optics” that exists just within our range of hearing. A saw blade whines in the background. It feels removed from society, operating under its own laws and with scant regard for how it is received.

There is a feel of a lead heavy Slowdive to “Quiet Time”, but with a really heavy drumbeat and a kind of groaning agony taking place somewhere within this realm. Strangely, it has a dancefloor swagger to it, but I think it would be enough to empty any self respecting venue. The voice on “Simulus” comes from behind an obfuscating scree of noise, and you feel that maybe you could just catch a word if you strained a little bit harder.

These obscure incantations do a little more to put a distance between music and listener ,and by the time the swirling miasma of final track “Petrechoria” assails you, with its mist-wreathed vocals coming at you as if from another realm, you really do feel as if you have been drawn somewhere new and uncategorisable. Quite a feat for one person and a room of machines.

-Mr Olivetti-