Anamnesis - Single Review: Coms
26 Jun 2022 // A review by Callum Wagstaff
Coms sounds like a clown rubbing wet crocks against a saxophone. After a few seconds it also sounds like somebody
close is tracing their finger around a half empty wine glass and somebody far away is buffing a bird cage with an angle grinder.
Further along the track there is a tiny steam engine driving backwards. Finally, police sirens have fallen asleep and are snoring.
The reason it sounds like this is because
Anamnesis is doing the thing from
I Am Sitting in a Room where Alvin Lucier
records himself talking and keeps playing it back into a biggish room until it sounds like wine glasses and bird cages.
Lucier's sample was an explanation of his thesis, but Anamnesis has chosen to say, "I am trying to talk to you but I cannot
get you to listen to me", which ties into the concept of the purposefully misspelt coms, meaning comms, meaning
communications, which is ironic because whenever anyone says they're in comms it's a wishy-washy word that
communicates nothing.
They may as well have said "I have no mouth, and I must scream" because it's like the sound designey hidden tracks
from 90's alt metal records that used to scare the shit out of me as a kid. The non wine-cage parts were derived from the
likes of Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead. I'm reminded of industrial projects like Prurient and an old black metal
band I heard once called Havohej.
Anamnesis' mission statement is to produce "willfully obscure and difficult" music and they proudly pre-empt
labels like pretentious and self-indulgent. In this case, self-awareness really does make it ok.
I get bored just reviewing music anyway.
5 stars.
Rating:
☆☆☆☆☆
( 5 / 5 )
About Anamnesis
Anamnesis is a musician on a highly individual and personal journey. The goal being to orbit through an Apogee point of some of the outer reaches of musical ideas and expression, and a Perigee point of more contemporary and accessible musical forms.
Pretentious? Mai Oui!
Self Indulgent? Oh, absolutely.
Stay tuned for 20th century classical, Musique Concrete, Trip Hop rhythms, home made percussion and spoken word lyrics. Influences include Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varese, Alivin Lucier, Tom Waits, Massive Attack, Tricky and The Residents (On a good day, anyway!)
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