Red Sparowes Touch Down in Ljubljana for the Second Time

If names like Isis, Pelican, Neurosis, Angel Hair or Halifax Pier mean anything to you, then last Tuesday, May 8, you were no doubt making a pilgrimage to Ljubljana’s temple of alternative rock sounds. Well… a little past Metelkova, toward Orto bar, to be more precise. The American ambient oddballs and avant-garde audio manipulators Red Sparowes had announced their return to Ljubljana. And this American quintet isn’t just an extension of the core idea behind the aforementioned Isis and Neurosis, two names that, in alternative waters, stand for a couple of key building blocks of modern post-rock and post-metal orchestration. Bryant Clifford Meyer, guitarist of Isis, Josh Graham, guitarist of Neurosis, bassist Greg Burns, who can also tame the sweet tones of a pedal steel guitar (otherwise a member of Halifax Pier), guitarist Andy Arahood (an indispensable part of the Angel Hair crew) and David Clifford, drum wizard also in Pleasure Forever, already rose above the rut of repeating already-heard patterns on their conceptual debut At The Soundless Dawn, and the cherry on top was the second record, Every Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun, which saw the light of day last year. This was definitely shaping up as a feast for every audiophile who doesn’t swear by MTV-style bouncy pop alone. So I too set off toward Orto, with a resolute stride and in good company.

The pretty reasonable price of tickets on the day of the show (it was only 10 €) lured a fair number of listeners to the first floor of the red-upholstered Orto, and judging by the T-shirts, they actually knew what was in store. The stage was discreetly lit by the subdued glow of a dozen small red night lights. On the stage floor sprawled a sizable arsenal of effects, promising to feed the insatiable hunger for psychedelic sounds in style. Just after ten o’clock, with the wait made to pass quicker by interesting chats in an atmosphere of fairly ambient music, the noise from the speakers slowly faded. Red Sparowes were stepping onto Slovenian, or at least Ljubljana, stages for the second time; each grabbed an instrument and, after a short tune-up, they started without a word on the evening’s dissection of fragmentary states of consciousness.

They opened the show with a track from their debut At The Soundless Dawn, the opening ambient piece that tells you right away what to expect from the night: ‘Alone And Unaware, The Landscape Was Transformed In Front Of Our Eyes’. Floating guitar squeals and gentle tapping on the drums complement the visual backdrop. Shadows of buildings. Outlines of houses, above which, like an ill omen, the sun glows hazily from behind the clouds. Projections of a post-apocalyptic city. The peace and quiet are blown away by the winds of a nuclear explosion. Horizons turn red. The world is changed. You could actually relive all of this just by listening, as the five sonic manipulators toy with your nerve endings. Hypnotic melodies instantly saturate you with the colossal epic quality of the wordless message of the music itself. The red thread is, this time, truly blood red and sensually tactile. Powerful. The ambient piece grows into the next track, ‘Buildings Began To Stretch Wide Across The Sky, And The Air Filled With A Reddish Glow’. The images of the new world are utterly unclear. After the apocalypse, only calm and spiritual rebirth can follow. The section that comes after those first two ambient excerpts from the provocative but totally overlooked debut is rounded out by the compact whole of the new Bible of ambient rock, Every Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun. The concept album plays with the historical events of Mao Tse Tung’s “Great Leap Forward”, but it’s by no means trivial platitudes. Greg’s bass, with a repeating, sliding riff, opens up the horizon for a dialogue between three guitars and drums that are almost jazzy, and then the next moment the softness grows into a hard explosion of sharper shades from the sonic palette. ‘The Great Leap Forward Poured Down Upon Us One Day Like A Mighty Storm, Suddenly And Furiously Blinding Our Senses’. On the screen, pictures of happy people flourish, cut through by footage from the Chinese parliament. “We will decide in the name of the people and look after their well-being…” are the words that silently address the auditorium. Gradually you almost forget about the entranced sound shamans swaying in the half-dark on the stage. Andy, on the far left, coaxes almost U2-style delays out of his Stratocaster. Josh and Cliff complement him in that Isis-Neurosis way, while Greg and Dave top off the melodic wall of thick, addictive sound with sensual rhythm. You don’t notice when or how, but they’ve already led us into the next theme. Into ‘We Stood Transfixed In Blank Devotion As Our Leader Spoke To Us, Looking Down On Our Mute Faces With A Great, Raging, And Unseeing Eye’. The darker contours of the dreamy world are cut across by images of Mao Tse Tung, who, like the father of his nation, watches vigilantly over his subjects. The mute faces of the elderly, like pictorial vignettes, betray no emotion whatsoever. The children look smiling and almost lifeless. As if they weren’t of this world. The landscape glows in the colors of the evening sun, which a Polaroid camera softens into gentle vignettes. Sound and image are in constant dialogue, growing into an unbroken web of criticism of the system that doesn’t need a single slogan or a single sentence for it; only open ears, eyes and receptive hearts. ‘Like The Howling Glory Of The Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous And The Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts And Clutching Our Innocent Awe’. People are sheep, and the job of those in power is to lead them, to salvation or to ruin… Native American drums. The rhythm of war drums. Josh’s guitar, with an e-bow like a siren, shakes you from the left. Andy gives himself over to gently coloring with picked strings, while on the right Cliff nervously furrows the image of calm. And the music practically begs you to close your eyes and surrender to the rocking tide of sound. ‘A Message Of Awarice Rained Down And Carried Us Away Into False Dreams Of Endless Riches’. An almost cowboy theme with a gliding pedal steel guitar, which Greg takes into his own hands quite naturally, while Andy almost unnoticeably picks up the four-string part of the necessary orchestration. A dreamy intro. And on the screen, a landscape. Seemingly calm and serene. Fields and idyll. Suddenly flocks of birds descend on the fields. The footage of the birds is almost like something out of a film by some master of suspense. But the relative ease lasts only about five minutes. Maybe a little more. Time for a reckoning. ‘Annihilate the Sparrow, That Stealer Of Seed, And Our Harvests Will Abound; We Will Watch Our Wealth Flood In’. Almost as if the reckoning had already happened. You can feel death and destruction in the sound, and a held breath. You could almost feel the sorrow and the horror. Images of hungry, suffering people on the screen round out the fresco of the necessary chain of events to come, with an almost historical verism. In 1958, by decree of the Great Leader, the Chinese killed millions of birds so they wouldn’t devour the whole harvest. Or rather, let’s say: so that there would be even more harvest. And they succeed, drastically reducing the bird population, sparrows above all, and the cataclysm only follows after this senseless act… ‘And By Our Own Hand Did Every Last Bird Lie Silent In Their Puddles, The Air Barren Of Song As The Clouds Drifted Away. For Killing Their Greatest Enemy, The Locusts Noisly Thanked Us And Turned Their Jaws Toward Our Crops, Swallowing Our Greed Whole’. The sky darkens. A countless swarm of locusts devours its way to a thank-you that lands like the sword of Damocles on those who wanted to play gods and masters of fate. On all those who thought themselves the owners of the world… The victory was short-lived and Pyrrhic. And those who believed they held all the strings in their hands become the victims on the altar of their own vanity. In a wild embroidery of new images, the Red Sparowes quintet gives itself over to an exhausting dance of mental exorcism. They sketch out your demons with such clarity that you can stay unmoved only if you’re dead, devoid of intellect, or completely deaf and blind. The ringing in your head can only fade gradually. After an interlude of just under two minutes, it’s time for the meditative denouement of the evening: ‘Millions Starved And We Became Skinnier, While Our Leaders Became Fatter And Fatter’ . You reap what you sow, after all. Still, at least a slightly open hatch remains, a crack of hope through which the sun might shine. On the screen, smiling faces again. And a question: have we learned anything at all from all this? ‘Finally, As That Blazing Sun Shone Down Upon Us, Did We Know That True Enemy Was The Voice Of Blind Idolatry; And Only Then Did We Begin To Think For Ourselves’. As if in mockery and for reflection, since it’s clear anyway that things in the world can happen in only two ways. In fact, the opening catastrophe can be read as a heart-wrenching tragedy. Every repetition of an already proven recipe, meanwhile, leads to similar results, only this time the situation is a farce, not a tragedy. Very philosophical. Very full. Adding anything at all would be superfluous. After a little more than an hour and a quarter, Red Sparowes leave the stage. Like moral victors. The Slovenian audience, though, understands the concept of a concert as an endless pursuit of encores, so the calls for more follow. And after a bit of shouting, Red Sparowes really do come back. Visibly pleased with the crowd’s response, they take up their instruments again and spread out their post-apocalyptic epilogue before us: ‘The Sixth Extinction Crept Up Slowly, Like Sunlight Throught The Shutters, As We Looked Back In Regret…’. The landscape returns. And with it the possibility of going back to the sphere of the known and the safe. Of peeling yourself away from the gray of the average and experiencing a personal evolution toward a more advanced form of Homo sapiens as a spiritual being. The last feathers have fallen from the wings on which we all flew toward the sky together. The blazing sun of insight melted the wax and the angels began to fall toward the ground. The coherent whole of the evening ended in style, and nobody who got it, or even started to get it, could have walked away unmoved.

After Red Sparowes’ second landing in our parts, I dare say they won me over and swept me away even more than the first time. The first time I felt a state of tremendum, something close to fear at everything they could pour into my heart and soul. Then, after I’d tasted what was on offer again and again, a state of fascinans set in. The foundations for faith had been laid. Faith in personal catharsis and in the endless beauty of the moment of final liberation from all bodily bonds. The sonic cluster known as Red Sparowes can undoubtedly be described only through approximations. I could use words like shattering, beauty, meditativeness, magic and endless, colossal grandeur. But I’d rather stay silent about it and hint that it’s well worth plunging into their sonically cleansing bath again and again, and enjoying it to the fullest in a state close to levitation…