Week 20 of 52 albums in a year
Zeitgeber - Fellow Prisoners of the Splendour and Travail of the Earth - Part 1.
Hi everyone.
This week I've been listening to Zeitgeber - Fellow Prisoners of the Splendour and Travail of the Earth - Part 1. It's a bit of a mouthful which is surprising considering there are no vocals on any of the songs.
I really liked this album. As usual I listened to it through a bunch of different sound sources, but if you can get a good set of headphones, this album really shines. There's lots of subtle sounds that play in the background, and hearing the intricacies of the drums is where this album stands out.
The main composer is a bloke called Evan McGregor. He's the drummer for Hashshashin and he's released 2 other albums under the name Zeitgeber, Heteronomy and Transforming The Random Crushing Forces Into Manageable Patterns. Each album is quite different, but this new one is all about the interplay between the drums and piano. There are a lot more instruments than just those 2, but the main songs are formed around their interplay.
This album has 6 tracks on it, but they are in couples. So the first track, Innenwelt - perceptions as heuristics leads naturally into Innenwelt - semiosphere. It's exploring the same theme but it gets a bit more epic during semiosphere. The drums on these two tracks are fantastic, it's not quite metal drumming but it's got moments which sound really full on, all the while it's jamming with a piano and a clarinet.
Next up is Passage of Time - overclocking and it's neighbour, Passage of Time - time dilates after spontaneous blinking. I love how the rhythm starts in overclocking. This is where it helps to have decent speakers to actually hear the drums that are sitting behind the piano right from the start. I tried to show a bloke at work this on my phone and it just didn't translate, you could hear the cymbals but not the subtle drumming. Similar to the songs previously, the interplay with the instruments is fantastic, and really showcase the drums ability to bring a song up and down in intensity. Not being a drummer, I struggle to articulate what I'm listening to exactly, but there's many moments during these two pieces that I love. Taken as a whole, there's 21 minutes of music with just these 2 songs.
The last two tracks are Signal - exafference and Signal - reafference. This starts off quite gentle, most of exafference is mellow really until the very end, and reafference kicks things up a notch once it gets going. You can hear different sounds in the background like didgeridoos when it calms down but as a whole it sounds like the piano leads more. The drums are still a large part of the dynamics, but the themes are explored more by the piano than the drums, at least to my ears.
All in all, I thought this was a fantastic album and it's something I'd happily revisit in future. I'd give it 5 out of 5 fingers, a full fisting! It's not something that I'd want to listen to day in day out for weeks on end, but after around 20 listens, I still don't feel like I've finished exploring this album. It's dense, the lack of lyrics or samples adds rather than detracts from the overall experience, and the album feels complete even though you could say it's 'only' 3 songs long. I look forward to Part 2 of this album series.
Long story short, if you like drums and interesting rhythms, check this out!
The year so far: