THE SURF MESSENGERS - lovest
(CD, r.a.i.g.)
“lovest” by “The Surf Messengers may be rewarded
with praise for the most delicate and most impressive record cover of the
year (made by Zonder Zond) – enshrining their CD with a handmade book in
thick cardboard covers filled with very emotive pictures of various kinds of
people, each by themselves, in an open field staring at the sun, enjoying
its warmth or envisioning a better future. These pictures are black and
white, handmanipulated to look aged and worn and ripped, and with the
hand(s) of god printed in on every one of them as on another layer of
existence. Myterious and enigmatic and at the same time like a warm hug,
full of hope and desires. An eerie mixture that despite all its unsettling
imagery – the black and white, the distorted parts of the pictures, the
ghostly smoke evaporating here and there – nevertheless is full of
positivity and clarity.
And that also describes the music of the Surf
Messengers pretty well. As far from what their bandname suggests as
possible, the three tracks are excerpts from unsettling, weird and fringey
improvisations or ad hoc compositions / productions, that penetrate the
mind. It is hard to say if they are strangeness covered in nicety or
friendliness covered in weirdness. The quartet of leader Will Whitney
(metal, guitars, drones, vocal samples), Glenda Pescado (guitar, keyboards,
noise loops), Nick Danger (percussions and some noise machinery) and Annie
Q. (flute, alto sax, voice) don’t care for any kind of rules of harmonies
or compositional structures. Their tracks just seem to evolute in the studio
or live, and whatever comes from them, will come as it is. This is not the
noise ratchetry of some hardcore free improv jazz where playing as far away
from the usual is the only guideline, not at all. Guitars are strummed as
generations of musicians have done and the singing, though lined with echo,
is regular, but the overall effect is of stunning out there-ness.
The first track “Strange Archers” is like Sigur Ros
but unsettling, eerie and spooky. Even though it has already been recorded
ten years ago, it is still a fresh experience of listening to someone’s
mind, probably some women’s, slowly go insane. Over the course of almost
half an hour, all kinds of samples and strange noises weave through this
mind in an unchanging subtle rhythm. The second track, “Ni, my lovest
one”, is an excerpt from a 24 hour performance stages in Norfolk in the
year 2000 and does not do justice to the connotations its title conjures.
Over some unrelentless digital static keyboard sounds and alto sax call out
like lonely animals in the fierce dark. Everybody knows that love is a
dangerous jungle, but to put it down so plainly is something new indeed. And
once again the surf messengers fall into a comatose rhythm that serves as
the basis for a weird ride. The third track, “bright clear blue
(everything goes to dust)” is the youngest track on here, having been
recorded live in the studio in 2006 and it is another half hour suite of a
warped and deranged mind. It is the most reduced and introverted thing on
here and takes its time to spell out any note.
This, of course, is not to say, that the musicians are
not fully in grasp of their own wits or anything like this, quite contrary
so, because it takes a certain kind of genius to be able to get in a warped
mindset and then form some kind of poetry of it. It is for you, the
listener, to decide how far you want to go with that.
