Enamel Of The Sea: Hive

(Rocket Recordings)

DL/ CD/ Vinyl

Launched October 6^th 2023

BUY HERE

Enamel Of The Sea returns with Hive, an album of cinematic soundscapes and sci-fi indebted, digital experimentation. Andy Brown shares his ideas for Louder Than Battle.

There’s at all times been one thing deeply cinematic in regards to the music made by Enamel of the Sea. The London-based band has been efficiently ploughing their very own furrow since their 2013 debut LP, Orphaned By The Ocean. Sprawling, world-building soundscapes that wouldn’t sound misplaced on some dystopian sci-fi movie. They mix this with a genuinely experimental spirit and an affinity with esoteric acts like Throbbing Gristle. Albeit with out the identical thirst for provocation. Altogether, it’s a fairly attractive combine. Whereas their silver display desires had been absolutely explored with their different soundtrack to Ben Wheatley’s A Area In England, their albums proceed to conjure their very own filmic vistas. Hive is their sixth album and finds the band in impolite well being. Over eight tracks, they make use of a heady mixture of bass, guitar, beats, synths, occasional vocals and trumpet to increase their already spectacular pocket universe.

The album was influenced by Frank Herbert’s ebook Hellstrom’s Hive, a sci-fi novel regarding an unconventional scientist and a subterranean hive of insect-human hybrids. Appropriately sufficient, Artemis seems like we’re slowly descending into some unusual new world. Nonetheless, it doesn’t really feel nightmarish or foreboding such as you may anticipate underneath such circumstances. I imply, that enormous world-eating insect on the quilt does look fairly terrifying. A lone trumpet sings a melancholic serenade as glitchy electronics and delicate guitar arpeggios bloom. A glacial slide into someplace stuffed with surprise and bristling with potential. It’s an expansive and completely attractive introduction to the album. Welcome to our world, the band appears to be saying. Together with Æther and Apollo (extra of these later), the observe was created to supply a soundtrack to a documentary on the Apollo moon landings at London’s Science Museum.

This reasonably blissful state is rudely interrupted by the pummelling electronica of Get With The Program. Like a bucket of chilly water to the face, the observe supplies a heart-racing wake-up name. “How do you are feeling?” intones the voice because the pulsing Krautrock takes us deeper into the Hive. Butterfly Home takes one other sonic detour, with a observe that feels just like the band’s tackle electro-pop. A observe with conventional vocals during reasonably than snippets of dislocated dialogue, the music is an impossibly cool collaboration with vocalist Kath Gifford (Snowpony/Sleazy Tiger/The Wargs). The outcomes? Melancholic leftfield synth-pop at its best. A splendidly hypnotic observe regarding angels, devils and a pining sense of isolation and loss. It’s much less acquainted terrain for Enamel Of The Sea but it’s carried off with aplomb.

Liminal Kin gently lowers us beneath the waves earlier than a skittering, sort of mutant techno kicks in. That lonesome trumpet reappears in direction of the tip when the noise begins to fade. This segues superbly into the starry-eyed, gradual sprawl of Æther. Think about the celestial funeral hymn of Coil’s Going Up or certainly one of Mogwai’s extra melancholic moments. Oh, candy lord, this can be a attractive piece of music. It’s over far too rapidly for my liking however there’s no time to grieve as we’re hit head-on by the electronica epic, Megafragma. 9 wonderful minutes of sweat-drenched digital experimentation propelled by an intense, club-ready groove. A kaleidoscopic, psychedelic nightmare that you could dance to. A dancefloor banger that feels prefer it’s been wilfully sabotaged by Nurse With Wound ‘madman’ Steven Stapleton. Suffice to say, this ought to be an absolute deal with to listen to dwell.

Powerhorse is a disarming mixture of glistening sci-fi synths, cowbell and beats that drift between the cosmic dancefloor and post-mission melancholia. “I don’t consider there’s any future in vehicles” comes a tragic, dislocated voice. Though the vibe couldn’t be extra totally different, the observe’s solitary lyric is taken from Black Sabbath’s Gap In The Sky. We end with Apollo, a observe created for the aforementioned moon landings documentary. A swell of atmospheric synths and skeletal guitar that’s completely complimented by that reoccurring, ever-lonesome trumpet. Think about some intergalactic Titanic the place the band performs on because the craft is about adrift within the starry abyss. An impressive, otherworldly sign-off. Hive is an impressively adventurous document but like a few of the highest soundtracks, their fashion of experimentation stays accessible. You simply want to supply your personal footage with this one.

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Enamel Of Sea dwell dates:

06/10/2023 UK Brighton Hope & Wreck

07/10/2023 UK London Trades Membership

13/10/2023 UK Preston The Ferret

14/10/2023 UK Newcastle The Lubber Fiend

20/10/2023 UK Manchester White Lodge w/Hey Colossus

22/10/2023 UK Glasgow Hug & Pint

28/10/2023 UK Bristol Crofters Rights

18/11/2023 UK Ramsgate Ramsgate Music Corridor w/Smote, Alison Cotton

You will discover Enamel Of The Sea on Fb, Instagram, X and Bandcamp.

All phrases by Andy Brown. You’ll be able to go to his writer profile and browse extra of his critiques for Louder Than Battle right here.