Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Canyon Observer, The
Label: Kapa Records
Release: 2011
Runtime: 29:43
Rating: 4/5
“Buy local and Slovenian!” is the refrain of advertisers, one that gives you acute pancreatitis and a gag reflex at the mere mention of homegrown and Slovenian, and yet our side of the Alps boasts a damn rich pool of good, hard-hitting alternative acts, bands and individuals. Alternative to what? In an age when the mainstream is saturated with every possible and impossible construct and idea, defined by the gravitational pull of current trends and one-day fads. A good ten-odd years ago – damn, since Kyuss it’s already been a whole other decade of musical revelation – the mainstream also discovered an invasion of sludge bands that tried, with more or less success, to distance themselves from heavyweights and names like Isis, Pelican, Neurosis and, if we’re splitting hairs, part of that eerie beauty lives on today in the incarnation of Mastodon. With a time lag, the wheels of the Slovenian music scene are also turning toward eternity and addictive, hit-making beauty, and the excuse for this spiel about archaeological finds of the past is this year’s release, forged under the fingers of the Ljubljana quintet The Canyon Observer.
As if the lads, gathered from all possible and impossible winds, were trying to announce a mental about-face in how they perceive and present their musical litany as something new, they’re turning a new page in the book of Slovenian reinterpretations of music, in multiple steps and multiple chapters. The first chapter in the series of revelations goes by the name Chapter I: The Current Of Her Ocean Brings Me To My Knees. That The Canyon Observer are merely a doorkeeper and a window onto a world of a thousand possibilities is clear from the very first moment of the record, made up of the four short acts of this debut EP. Members of Gonoba (Hopsy, a.k.a. singer Matic, has been sharpening his vocal cords there for quite a while), Uroš, BobenBasPaAnanas and Colddew picked a slow, greasy musical form wrapped in the smoke of shamanism as the direction for their megaton swaying. Sludge as a metal derivative of stoner, enriched with a noisy post-metal or, if you prefer, post-rock apocalyptic vision of a world of wonderful grey, isn’t exactly music for dancing or breezy optimism, but it is music that offers a wide field of total pleasure to all those audiophiles forever hungry for world-weariness and atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TfowZi_3VE
And the landscape resembles a foggy Scandinavian expanse, lit by distant flashes of lightning and sleeping volcanoes. The mantra’s strong guiding thread is a perfect balance between a hesitant, slow grinding of rhythm, fat bass and lightly distorted guitars drenched in a sea of warm analog effects, while across the organic whole, guttural screams masked in echoes and lyrics fused into unrecognizability and unintelligibility come crawling and flowing. With the opening track Part I: The Lingering Scent Of Her Divinity The Canyon Observer bet on the eroticism of dreaminess and opiatic volatility, and on a perfect atmosphere of distorted images and elusive melody. The recipe is simple and effective: after a long build-up of passion with a few accentuated notes, you have to lure the listener deeper into a forest of megalomaniacal ideas and intoxicating fog, and in the little mists of the swamp dusk lurk menacing monsters, Gollums, orcs and erotically alluring nymphs with teeth sharp as daggers.
The first act lights up the stage of the theater of life and the bitterness of an unstoppable rhythmic love for multi-ton monoliths. The Canyon Observer are a baroque-carved guitar monolith on which insights are etched and which, like smoky tubes in an old amp, carry the sounds of the subconscious that, through glowing white-hot strings, turn into impressive silhouettes of epic stories and battles that we all fight, but few know how to put into words and breathe soul into. The tempo is slow and evenly stretched out, so the ride over the peaks of pleasure and down into the chasms of depression feels natural and tailor-made for every lover of the different who has the luxury of time and lets themselves put on headphones, close their eyes and wash the dust of eternal rushing off a tired body.
Still, everything in the mosaic is in proportion, and all four megalomaniacal parts of this four-acter are perfectly polished and fit snugly one onto the next. Nothing grates and nothing knocks the mental bolide or cocoon you’ve spun yourself into off its stubborn, carefully programmed path. Chapter I: The Current of Her Ocean Brings Me to Her Knees is a manifesto that weaves its message into the cerebellum with rawness and relentlessness and, if I may borrow an image I read somewhere once, with its own take on American gothic, gives every listener whatever their soul is craving at the moment. Personally, I heard in it the bare pain of interpersonal relationships of total dependence. The pools of blood gushing from a loving, wounded heart are, despite their gloom, magnetically attractive, and by association they offer to turn images into different impulses that you can bottle up in your own little soul-caskets and vials. Sludge is merely a metronome and a tool for counting out the rhythm of your existence and fading, and the perfect impulse of the instinct for self-preservation offers in it a chance to escape, disconnect and reach a perfect feeling of ecstasy – the ecstasy of death. All this and more is hidden in a package shorter than half a turn of the clock, which already stirs up a growing hunger and greed for a quality follow-up. We humans, in our masochistic-sadistic way, are so easily intoxicated by things we can’t easily define and understand. Well, at least some of us can barely resist it; as for the wider masses of airheaded followers and trend-chasers, I don’t intend to waste ink and mental energy on them anyway …
Lineup
Gašper Letonja – guitar
Matic Babič – vocals
Sašo Paljk – drums
David Videnšek – guitar
Nik Franko – bass
Production
Plueg & Peter Ošlaj
Tracklist
1. Part I: The Lingering Scent Of Her Divinity
2. Part II: Your Feathers Inflict My Scars, The Ones You Gave Life To
3. Part III: Our Universe, Written In Blood
4. Part IV: My Will
