Artist: Blackfield
Label: K-Scope Records
Release: 2011
Length: 39:35
Rating: 3.5/5
Now a firmly established international project on the international scene, the brainchild of Israeli musician Aviv Geffen and Porcupine Tree boss and musical wizard Steven Wilson has finally found enough time, four years after the previous album (“Blackfield II”), to serve up a new release.
Never mind that Steven Wilson put out two new albums with Porcupine Tree in the meantime, did exhausting tours, and busied himself with remastering a few cult albums that shaped and defined the development of progressive rock in the early seventies for all time, and even almost managed to reunite the classic King Crimson lineup, which is about as likely as an immaculate conception. Meanwhile, his partner Aviv was diligently jotting down and logging new ideas he could use for a new Blackfield record.
The album, titled “Welcome To My DNA”, continues the sonic and stylistic traits of its two predecessors. This being the third album in a row, its originality can’t surprise as pleasantly as it did with the first two, but its quality still doesn’t lag behind its older brothers in any way.
The two musicians keep sticking to the proven formula. Aviv brought the bulk of the ideas; he’s practically the main songwriter of the whole album. Since he has obviously always been a huge Porcupine Tree fan, and since Blackfield songs consequently aren’t a big departure from Porcupine Tree “little songs” like Lazarus or Shemovedon, this time the role of final corrector, a sort of auditor, was plenty for Wilson to add his creative pinch effectively. Most of Geffen’s songs were originally even written in Hebrew and then re-rendered into English.
Blackfield remain a dark, black, melancholic pop offshoot of Porcupine Tree, trimmed down to the compactness of the melodically infectious verse-chorus combo. Yes. We’ve already established that the thing at times comes close to pop music, and that plenty of songs are arranged as if made to order for heavy rotation on radio airwaves.
The indie sound of organic, warm-sounding, rustic “jangle” guitars of “Beatles-like” origin runs through the album again, in an acoustic or semi-acoustic manner. It’s still wrapped in a masterful dose of Wilson’s “soundscapes” like veils, something Steven picked up from the pioneering first King Crimson albums and long ago worked, refined, into the most fascinating works of Porcupine Tree.
The material on “Welcome To My DNA” is varied and full of shifting motifs, so the album flows and is dynamic in stringing together vibrant contrasts of many moods, which means the four-year break was more than welcome for gathering ideas and picking out the best of them. A heavier song like Blood is especially surprising, smelling almost metal in its overdistorted riff, though of course it stays within the bounds of Blackfield’s message. Then there are the utterly calm ballad detours done in a pleasant acoustic manner, like Far Away, or Dissolving With The Night, built on simple piano accompaniment. Endlessly listenable and infectious throughout. Of course, you have to be a melancholy lover. And don’t worry. Even though Blackfield’s origins are international, the whole thing sounds like the typical melancholy of the British Isles. So the melancholy really works, it really touches the listener, and there’s not a speck of room for forced feeling. The atmosphere of “Welcome To My DNA” will thus keep fitting fans of moods like a glove, the kind fathered by Porcupine Tree. The song Zigota is the album’s highlight, more interesting in its arrangement when it comes to the sound palettes surrounding the vocal duet, and here it’s easier to draw some parallels with what Porcupine Tree do. But as said. Because of its heavy dependence on the final polish of arrangements under Steven Wilson’s watchful eye and Geffen’s obsession with Porcupine Tree, Blackfield is simply a child of Porcupine Tree! Luckily with a clearly embodied identity that only occasionally and fleetingly reminds you of Porcupine Tree.
As far as the music goes, there’s nothing to fault on the new Blackfield album. It comes equipped with a hair-splitting rhetoric of richly filled-out sound. A warm and active rhythm section sound, mostly organic-sounding guitar accompaniment, and vocal melodies that are exceptionally pleasant to the ear, shaped very successfully in duets by both vocalists. When they come together in duets, it’s downright fascinating how much space they fill with the harmonies they create. The only minus of this album is the poetic side of the song Go To Hell, which in its bizarre dumbness downgrades the track so much, compared with the rest of the material, that it would have been better placed at seventh or eighth in the track list, or as a bonus track on the album (if the two musicians insist it has to stay on the record). The endless repetition of the lines: “Fuck you all, Fuck you, I don’t care,…” feels really superficial and unworthy of the high quality level of the rest of the songs, which are polished to perfection.
“Welcome To My DNA” retains all the musical hooks with which the project won over the hearts of Porcupine Tree fans and everyone who gets fired up by melancholy served up in a unique way. Without a speck of dissonant screeching. You could call it alternative rock wearing clear pop makeup, while constantly draped in the black of the inevitable arrival of judgment day. Infectious, once again polished all the way through, and, not least important, once again different all the way through. The most that healthy, high-intellect musical artistry can offer music consumers.
ONE MORE thing. The cover of the new Blackfield album, designed by Carl Glover, was originally intended for the Marillion album “Somewhere Else”, which came out in 2007.
Lineup
Steven Wilson – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Aviv Geffen – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Eran Mitelman – piano, keyboards
Seffy Efrat – bass guitar, backing vocals
Tomer Z – drums
Production
Steven Wilson, Aviv Geffen & Trevor Horn
Track list
1. Glass House
2. Go to Hell
3. Rising of the Tide
4. Waving
5. Far Away
6. Dissolving with the Night
7. Blood
8. On the Plane
9. Oxygen
10. Zigota
11. DNA
