THE MOGLASS – sparrow juice

(CD, nexsound)

It is not at all true that The Moglass wouldn’t care about form and structure of their music, but they disregard it, meaning they don’t care about form and structure as a given rule or guideline. It seems as if the form and structure of their music is a result of whatever a song set out to be when it started. To be able to do this and not go over the cliff into the free air of pure chaos and noise takes a lot of experience, emotion and empathy. Especially in a group context. After all, the Moglass, as the “the” in their name indicates, are still a band in the most proper sense, even if their music drifts off onto an endless sea that is ambient and droney and filled with sounds of field recordings. Even if they use an impressive array of instruments ranging from acoustic guitars via alto saxophone to computers and editing. Even if they include scratchy and noisy bitparts off of old records or movies. Even if they blend into almost easy listening bass and sax lines at the end of “Revisited with R” on here. Even if the oppose improvised guitar noodling with soft electronic fracas and guitar feedback on “Geering Rasperries”. Even if there are wonderful bass intereference sounds on “Indirect News”. They are just as artsy and driven as they are laidback and organic.

Their disregard of form culminates in the fact that every proper song on “sparrow juice” seems to break off or fade off well before its time, thus reducing even the most detailed introspection into a certain sound or atmosphere to an addendum or a hors d’oeuvre. I am pretty sure they have a good reason for that. It can’t be short attention spans because all the tracks are of various langth and played throughout with great concentration and care for detail. I don’t think anybody would be able to shut that off like a switch. It must have taken great willpower to say “cut” at just the right moments, and who would want to chose them. Moreover, between each track there is one of those short samples from wherever mentioned before, giving the whole record the appearance of listening to someone listening to music who at whatever points in time decides to switch to another programme. Another programme where the same post-modernist orchestra is playing a different song. Though these samples work well as a counterpart to the more lonely instrumental tracks in their praise of early 20^th century get together and festivities, thus making the whole record a great counterpart to Frank Sinatra’s “only the lonely”-album about loners from 1958 (which I have been listening to before writing this review, otherwise this idea would never have occurred to me, such is life…)

After all it might be that perfectly executed balance between free improvisation and structural accordance that makes for the appeal of “sparrow juice”. Thus the various emotions and atmospheres accrued and collected in the course of the album don’t seem like random leaves in an album of collections but get an invisible yet almost tangible masterplan. Oh yeah, humankind loves masterplans. Maybe it is the other way around and Moglass is trying with fervor and strength of mind to produce strict and rule-adhereing postrock but find themselves unable to contain all their energy and creativity within a single network and so the music seeps through leaks in all kinds of places, leaving the musicians grasping for woodwork and other rescuing items to keep them afloat. No, I don’t think that “sparrow juice” is a document of a band slowly dissolving and trying to keep up while watching themselves melt like a snowman.

Would it fit to note, that some scientist developed snow that melts at 30 degrees celsius? Would this also be a good point in time to hint again at “Ice 9” by Kurt Vonnegut and the effects such experimenting might have on our civilisation? Would it be okay to leave aside the notion that fantasy fiction is no good indicator on real developments, especially when that fiction is a few decades old, but to demand once again that art has always had better insight into the future and the developments of society than science or politics?