Since first being introduced to Swedish band, EYEMOUTH, courtesy of one of its members at the moment of their third EP was released in 2015, The RR has continued to immerse in their subsequent offerings with lively anticipation and keen curiosity. Fair to say, we have yet to be disappointed in what we have found, in varying degrees each encounter having evoked fascination. Now we bring you A headlong fall into the vast ocean of anxiety, the band’s new album, a release which can only be described as an adventure for ears and the imagination like no other.
With their musical histories taking in the likes of ESTRANGE and DARK ABSTRACT, Gothenburg hailing EYEMOUTH was formed by Marcus Lilja and Joakim Åberg in 2014. We came across them through Noera Genesis which followed a previous pair of similarly well-received EPs. The record shared tracks embracing ambient and atmospheric explorations to more corporeal electronic bred enterprise. As the pair’s music evolved so those more ethereal yet thickly emotive elements and textures matured and opened out, a dark exploration blossoming across the album A Newly Planted Grain and a subsequent clutch EPs including the acclaimed Cut and its successor, Eclipse. Within A headlong fall into the vast ocean of anxiety evolution has continued, the album’s collection of tracks themselves evolving pieces of intimation, imagination and experiment woven with craft; a fusion making every listen a new exploration of deeper discovery.
There is also a greater cinematic quality to the record at times, adding another aspect to its thickly melancholic yet vibrant breath and landscapes cast in psychedelic darkness, creative places which can be as otherworldly suggestive as organically involving. Album opening, We left death behind but suddenly his shadow blinded our sight immediately sets the sense of the journey and adventure ahead. Its initial electronic coaxing is soon shadowed by atmospheric clouds, their darker suggestiveness bringing shade across the brighter whispers of voices as electronic vibrancy grows.
The instrumental alone sparked tales and worlds within the imagination, and as it evolved into the following Lowlands (Standing on the seaside) so thoughts gathered further possibilities in their interpretations. It too offers a contrast of sonic disturbance with electronic warmth, a mercurial breath which soon wraps around the ever alluring vocals of the band. There is also a folkish essence to the EYEMOUTH sound which has exposed more of its temptation over recent releases and bears a Nordic richness here in album and song, strings and vocals especially offering a vehicle for its natural intimation.
That seemingly more traditional instrumentation shapes the more sinister beginnings of I fear it will not hold, its darkness exposed in the wiry resonance of its sound and the anxiety wrung harmonics of voice. Eventually a breath of dated historical disturbance evolves and shapes its transformation into To go without a sound, a track ethereally enclosing ears but still with that essence of darkness in its realm. Atmospherically involving and diaphanous in its electronically translucent body, the track gathers around magnetic vocals, all the while involving the imagination with compelling suggestiveness.
I want to bring myself into the light takes the listener into a floatation tank of shadows, a union of threat, portentousness and inviting curiosity radiating from the instrumental piece before A headlong fall takes that sense of isolation cored stimulus to emerge the listener into a realm of immersive light which in turn lands upon an eerie neo-folk lit land with simplicity and captivation in its climate.
It is a place immediately overshadowed and contrasted by For the bold and its industrial nurtured electronics and tenebrific climate. It is also a song with a synth pop resourcefulness in its creativity, its infectious presence challenging but equally aligning with the track’s darker more fateful intent. In a lofty landscape of creative peaks, the track and its predecessor set a new plateau of pleasure being soon joined, after the foreboding suggestiveness and spectral loneliness of The endless call by Tongue of Kali Ma.
Electronically and rhythmically shamanic, a rich captivation matched in voice, the track unveils a place of mystique and exotic promise yet it too has an uncanny darkness and mysteriousness to it which is as unsettling as it is instinctively involving. Across the song alone, the imagination is given a playground to explore and conjure within, new possibilities coming every time though that is a prowess in giving that every track within the release offers as A solid ground shows with its ghostly limbo and inner torment and in turn Dictated by fear through its own personal emotional turmoil. Though both tracks are brief they, as all, bring the richest and most expansive realm of sound, connotation and implication.
From the senses resonating realm of Look what I’ve found, where realisation of its intent continues to evolve and flicker with alternatives, and through the expansive presence and neo-gothic province of To part, EYEMOUTH continued to thickly enthral and emotionally and imaginatively involve. The final track has a domain of craft and adventure all of its own as it casts a place to escape to.
Indeed, A headlong fall into the vast ocean of anxiety is an escape in itself but equally an immersion into places and thoughts which could rival the darkness of the real world but with a far more enjoyable and enlivening outcome. EYEMOUTH create places like no one else can conjure, skilfully gripping and wonderfully curious states no finer than within their glorious new release.
A headlong fall into the vast ocean of anxiety is out now; available @ https://eyemouth.bandcamp.com/album/a-headlong-fall-into-the-vast-ocean-of-anxiety
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Pete RingMaster 23/03/2023
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