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CD Feature/ Monstrare, Wilt: "Graveflowers"

  Tobias

For most labels, split albums are merely a more secure way of pushing a record: Bundle several succesful projects on a disc and thereby assure yourself that you have more than just one fan base to fall back on. It is only after some remarkable releases that this format has in fact gained a meaning of its own and managed to offer something most regular releases can not: Diversity and a richness in creative ideas that extends beyond a single concept. “Graveflowers” represents one of those rare cases that both contributing artists have pushed the album higher than the sum of its individual components.

Of course, both Cordell Klier (Monstrare) and James Keeler (Wilt) are no newcomers to the scene, sharing a rich experience and extensive discographies. Klier’s work especially has been hard to follow, as he has operated in an almost anonymous realm, releasing next to nothing about his real life persona, running his doctsect label as an underground operation and spreading his compositions like a virus. Over the years, he has been active in the fields of noise and microtonal music, sometimes scraping more general contemporary developments such as glitch and clicks and cuts. The six tracks he delivers here are of a harsher and more in your face character than his two unique solo works on “Ad Noiseam”, yet they contain all of the different poles of his work: Grating manipulations over majestic cymbal drones, the roars of faceless beasts underneath reverbed sound splinters, static thunderstorms, rattling rhythmic maschineries and frantic collages – the world of monstrare is bleak, desolate, frightening and destitute, but it is also full of wonders. Keeler, meanwhile, enjoys deeping and staying within a single mood and his pieces are consequently longer and slightly more monochromatic. When looked at in their entirety, though, he has an equal talent of playing with the building blocks of styles such as Dark Ambient and turn them into idiosyncratic landscapes. The hollow structures of “From the Museum of Sleep” and the melancholic strings lamenting their certain demise in “When we had skin” are still conform to the rules of the genre, but on other occasions Wilt breaks the structures wide open with sudden erruptions of energy and anger or an almost tender finale.

If “Graveflowers” could well have been written by a single person, than this impression probably results from the fact that both artists have shared their pool of source material with the other, allowing themselves to be inspired by different trains of thought and ensuring a certain coherence and closeness. What looked like a risk at the outset, with both projects giving away a bit of their own profile to take on traits of his colleague, has ended up being a record which will not only please both fan blocks, but many others as well. A radical, relentless but rewarding effort.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Monstrare at doctsect
Homepage: Wilt at Ad Noiseam Records
Homepage: Angle Records