Kaboom Karavan - Barra Barra

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4...according to our Clinton on Thu 21 Apr, 2011.

I'm going to cut to the chase here. Basically the first track sounds like a Frenchman on his deathbed murmuring his final morphine affected musings whilst nurses faff about clearing away soiled linen. Track 2 goes for the wind brushing against the strings of a Spanish guitar vibe, track 3 is the rustling of a late night railway station, 4 is the local pensioners string ensemble tuning up, 5 someone clearing out the scrapings at the bottom of a metal rubbish bin with a whisk. I could go on but hopefully you get the idea. It's various soundscapes of alternating oddness, quite evocative at times I have to say, often quite scary yet at others soothing. It's like a microphone has been placed at several eerie locations and they've taped the results. The odd musical interruption occurs but its mainly clanking sounds, however it does have a way of taking the listener off to terrifying foreign climes without leaving the comfort of their record player.

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"the belgian collective led by bram bosteels have a history in theatre, film and contemporary dance. they have collaborated with musicians all over the world including miasmah's very own kreng, and released a debut album on mexico's umlo imprint, but this probably only gives a small indicator of what the collective actually sound like. there is something effortlessly surreal about the band, and surrealism is an aspect of art often attempted and very rarely perfected. here bosteels abuses his choice of instruments (and players) to the point where the listener would barely be able to place which instruments were being used at all, in fact at times you'd be hard pressed even to place what sort of music it was. 'barra barra' is a complex album which takes patience to navigate through; you could hear the clanking pre-industrialism of einsturzende neubauten, the slow brooding doom of bohren & der club of gore and the stuttering abstraction of black to comm yet it still feels fresh and distinctly current. unusually the most fitting comparison might be the work of the brothers quay, as the ticking, creaking, stuttering songs feel perfectly matched with these flickering, haunted images. this is what makes the album such an appropriate addition to the miasmah canon, and one that will haunt your dreams (and nightmares) for months to come."

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