Label: Central Control International Format: CD,LP
Not so much a supergroup as a superhighway-connected collective, mostly based in the south of France, Strings Of Consciousness delight in melding acoustic instruments with electronics, sliding one over the other and processing the former with the latter. The results could be messy, or could be described as extremely hallucinatory soundtracks to that imaginary collective headtrip movie which everyone who composes this sort of music seemingly contributes to.
Perhaps it is best to approach the album in its own right, but the guest names ( JG Thirlwell, Eugene Robinson from Oxbow, Barry Adamson – on whose label Our Moon Is Full is released, and it shows – and others contribute vocals) are as impressive as those of the ensemble’s core members who include Philippe Petit of BiP_HOp label fame, Andy Diagram of Spaceheads and Two Pale Boys and a host of French improv scenesters. Hell, even Hugh Hopper of The Soft Machine joins in the fun.
One result the number of participants involved is a certain tendency towards sounding like a compilation, and this is especially apparent in the first four tracks. No one overall sound ever dominates, but this is no bad thing, the mood swinging from electro-acoustic ambience and splurges of distended rock to the scratchy, sensous strings and reeds accompanying Robinson’s spoken word trek into the mythopaeic abyss of a tale of treachery, violence and murder in “Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness”. Here the electronics building in density until the music cracks as the enraged jealousy in narrator’s voice breaks down into impassioned despair as his self-appointed state of frenzied bloodlust explodes in metallic percussion and pounding heart bass beats. This marks an intense emotive peak for the first part of the album, and takes some coming down from – which is where Adamson comes in on a waft of throaty, soothing mutterings and a far gentler backing on “Sonic Glimpses”, whose almost romantic tone at first is soon spurred into thickly-spread impassioned jazz-rock spaciousness.
The second phase of the record finds twinkling strings plucked and bowed briefly around the treated voice of Lisa Smith Klossner, before Black Sifichi takes on the poetic duties, ruminating on mortality and the passage of time while the musical mood glows softly louder and grittier below his words, which flow in waves and ripples in – of course – a stream of consciousness which is soon immersed in a propulsive psychedelic grind of rhythm and melodic twin guitar. Sifichi is soon back along with Pete Simonelli of The Enablers, and the last tracks on the album merge into each other more seamlessly than the first on the first side (assuming the vinyl paradigm is being observed, which of course it can be on the LP edition), the whole flowing with less disconnection in peaks and troughs following a richly textured loud-quiet-loud dynamic which closes in a welter of disjointed feedback and words flung out into the moonlight.
-Linus Tossio-
