Reviews: Nevertheless, Hammock | Translucent, The Choir
Marc Byrd was once a member and producer of The Choir, and he wrote the popular worship number ‘God of Wonders’ (which, one assumes, was pretty lucrative). He was in the appropriately named duo Glassbyrd, with wife Christine Glass, which rode the wave of post-grunge Christian alt-pop. This millennium, he is one half of the duo Hammock (the other half is Andrew Thompson), releasing a dozen or so albums over the past twenty years in the ambient, post-rock, soundtrack-y field (a genre with rapturous devotees, in thrall to the decidedly low-key music), including an earlier one to accompany an art exhibition by the singer from Sigur Ros.
Hammock’s music’s appeal lies in its glacial pace and warmth, if that is not contradictory. It’s a bit like orchestral strings, a bit like organ, sometimes expansive, sometimes almost claustrophobic in its density, with slow washes of echoey sound, rounded chords in waves, diminishing into the aural distance. It’s good to nap to, if that’s not insulting, uplifting and meditative. It’s the kind of music that might accompany visuals of ice floes colliding or storm clouds forming.
In this post-rock genre, some of their albums include drums and vocals; here on Nevertheless, the sound is largely stripped-back – slowly drifting sonic clouds, but with occasional sparkles of guitar notes echoing out. Their previous album, last year’s Eschata, had some drums, but this latest release is more like 2013’s Oblivion Hymns, an ocean of sound (to borrow a phrase from ambient chronicler David Toop). Byrd has said he’s more of a ‘sound sculptor’ than guitar player, which sums up how he approaches things – the music is so drenched in loops, echo and delay that it doesn’t really sound like guitar – it’s more like the blended sound of an orchestra.
The Choir, maybe inspired by Hammock, have released their first post-rock album, Translucent. They were Christian alt-rock pioneers in the 1980s and 1990s who put art over evangelism or commercialism, their chiming guitars often a little ethereal, the music a little drone-like, but mostly without the heaviness of some bands of their era. At times they could lean towards the rousing sound of U2, doing Coldplay before Coldplay. At other times, they were dreamier, a sound that drew you in rather than shouted at you.
Translucent has a similar sound to Nevertheless, with perhaps instruments more perceptible, with synth washes and echoing guitars, often a bit more guitar-driven, to the extent of utilising the potential of slow feedback on ‘Chariot Race’ and ‘Nobody’s Angel’. ‘Nobody’s Angel’ sounds like melodic static, at least until a dulcimer (?) appears two-thirds into it. There’s perhaps a darker tint than Hammock; perhaps the rock’n’roll is only just beginning to slough off.
‘Slippery Moss’ has some Edge-like, ringing guitar notes, drenched in reverb. ‘The Bravest Mind’ sounds like the introduction to ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ extended for five minutes. Mind you, that’s what a fair bit of this music sounds like. Some songs feature rustic percussion. In ‘Cool Black Water’, the percussion is a little Asian sounding. That song also features lingering saxophone, a persistent feature of their previous albums.
They often refer to birds – here, ‘Take to the Sky’ has (either real or fabricated) bird calls over a dense, dark synthesizer base, and with some spare piano notes, a take on modernist piano and cello music. The combination of new tech and old sounds is one of the markers of this post-rock, a genre that overwhelmingly prioritises mood and experiment over more direct pop. Its popularity amongst musos and listeners might be a reaction to the immediacy and clamour of much of our digi-fied age.
Nick Mattiske blogs on books at coburgreviewofbooks.wordpress.com and is the illustrator of Thoughts That Feel So Big.
