BLUE - V-Ekpyrotic (2020)

I realise this probably means I'm now the marketing department of Love Earth Music, but they keep sending me this stuff and it's always good; and as beautifully produced physical media it's particularly appreciated as an alternative to the more usual link to a Bandcamp page with the suggestion that I check it out*.

Anyway, this BLUE are presumably nothing to do with the English boy band of the same name, the seventies Scottish band of the same name who tried to sue the English boy band, or Eiffel 65. As with the New Harnessians, there seems to be a possibility of it being related to +DOG+ by some means, but I don't know and it probably doesn't matter.

I was actually expecting something like Tangerine Dream because the cover reminds me of that of Phaedra on some admittedly tenuous level, and although there's no real resemblance to Tangerine Dream, V-Ekpyrotic sort of does something similar - surprisingly. Where the New Harnessians' Tabla Rasa seemed to represent the harsh textural noise of +DOG+ pushed to a somehow more overtly aesthetic extreme, BLUE pulls back to something more brutal, more primal and which actually reminds me of Trev Ward's Nails ov Christ, presenting three huge slabs of undifferentiated noise and distortion which become quickly hypnotic, thus additionally reminding me of Tangerine Dream - albeit obliquely - and seeming to work against themselves, which is odd; it's an oddly calming and meditative screaming cacophony. Circinus, the final track, differs in incorporating a more violent dynamic with walls of feedback which reminded me a little of early Ramleh. As with other releases from the same label, the cumulative effect suggests some kind of narrative, possibly something to do with the formation of the universe if the titles are any indication, reinforcing my own hunch that this sort of thing represents music catching up with abstract expressionist painting - although it's actually a lot more dynamic and engaging, in my view.

Love Earth Music once again prove just how much variation is to be found in this kind of music, and even that it is music.

*: Not you, Ade.