Konntinent
Degrees, Integers

Our album of the week (27th February 2009)

...according to our Brett on 26 February 2009.

Joint album of the week is one that came up stealthily and twatted us blindstyle a week or two back while we were dutifully ploughing our way through stereo fodder. We get an awful lot of this homely electronic ambient post-rock kind of thing and for the most part it leaves me bored shitless but even I joined in the praise for this Konntinent CD on Symbolic Interaction - along with everyone else in the office. The quality's pretty obvious from the off, with tracks veering between drifty melancholy and tense Godspeed atmospherics, but about halfway through things really start to pick up along with the introduction of more experimental elements. You get humming Raster Noton 'basslines' pulsing their way through tracks, one that evokes the sound of an alien abduction from start to finish (complete with garbled sounds from your malfunctioning TV), one that sounds like a minimalist 'Shadow of a Doubt' by Sonic Youth (complete with breathy female lyrics) and a lovely finale bathed in the glorious sunshine of droning Tangerine Dream-style synths. However, the best is blatantly 'This Searing Heat', a track grounded rhythmically by a fantastic, repetitious sound that's part Jaws, part loosened bass string and part ticking clock (a la Global Communication's '14:31'). An organ type sound underscores the tension while bursts of interferance and whirlwinds of static try their best to break through, gradually overpowering the other elements. It's like I've been pulled into the Poltergeist TV and now Slow Norris is stalking me. And it's all happening in reverse. It's an absolute beauty and probably worth the cheapy cheap price of entry alone, so the fact that there's plenty more goodness to be had is a bit of a bloody boon, is it not?