Artist: Asenath Blake
Title: Low Materialism
Type: Album
Label: Digital
I sometimes despair of the random connections my odd, tiny brain makes. So anyone remember Ebony Lake? Yes? Well you tell me why their name popped into my head on first listening to this debut full length from Welsh multi instrumentalist Asenath Blake (after three EPs and a couple of releases that fall under the dungeon synth crown) as there is only the barest of threads shared by them. Perhaps it is because it knocked me off balance in the same memorable way that ‘On the Eve Of The Grimly Invented’ did all those years ago.
This by the way is a good thing.
A scampering of notes, a flurry of light notes but a swathe of darkness falling all at the same time. And the vocals… oh the vocals. Part screech, part mad cackle full of prospective danger or even malevolence. Welcome to ‘By The Light Of A Hand Of Glory’. Its one of those unsettling songs where the percussion is fast, light and deft, one part of the melody fast as that, the other a slow winding warning. And the unhinged vocals in a world of their own. Yet somehow this unearthly waltz finds its own step and together it leaves me a little dizzy. Off balance even. ‘The Nailed Owls Reprisal’ follows the same weave but finds the place to plunge you down into a stronger current, a wriggling and twisting course that really leave you marroned in its own world.
Well that is some introduction to Asenath Blake.
As you may have gleaned from just those two titles this is an album steeped in and raised from witchcraft. Not from grand mausoleums or arched halls, but from the depths of ancient woods and the whispers through hedgerows. This is the horror of folklore at its heart, the origins of the makings, the truth of deeds done. When I was contacted, literally the morning after I had tagged this as an album to listen to, I was informed that its source inspiration is the ‘Western European witchcraft tradition, revisited through the lens of Georges Bataille’s transgressive philosophy’. I am no scholar of philosophy and my days of searching out philosophical studies of the esoteric are behind me far enough to have forgotten too much but needless to say this is a work of serious intent.
The folk elements here in the music first really raise their head clearly in ‘Bog Body’. The fiddle player cursed into an every tighter and fast circle of music and madness as the unique vocals scratch and bite from behind tangled hair and charms gathered from places you do not wish to know.
We dance through ‘Breastfeeding Toads’ and ‘Ridden By The Night-Mare’ and by this point the shore of safety is far, far distant on the fogs. ‘Wales’ Hidden Reverse’ is the point when I realise how oddly, and curiously difficult this album is. Now to be clear I have a fondness for a lot of ‘difficult’ music; works that don’t conform to easy listening and catchy melodies. The melodies here, like the almost discordant thread on ‘How To Dress A Mandrake Root’ that suddenly finds an almost straight path before veering back into the strange hinterland it spawned from, are not catchy. They are more snares. You hear them, their unconventional structures and meanderings and shifts, you focus on them, trying to pick the path with them and… and that is where you realise you are not in a place you know at all. And it is those short whispers of the conventional that make the rest bite deeper.
‘Eating Childrens Flesh’ is relentless, ‘The Distaff Gospel’ has a strong folk spine up front, a clatter of drums and a winding, slow haunting melody that veers off the path here and there but you can still follow that plaitive, simple tune, ‘Albino Powder’ seems to delve deeper undergound.
We end with ‘The Hangman’s Semen’, a trilling melody finding space between the shivering guitar and screech witch voice. A strange and genuinely haunting end to a most curious album indeed.
I am not going to lie; this will not be for everyone. Some may find it too chaotic in its approach to melody, others will find the high register of much of the guitar and the similar pace of the overall songs fatiguing (though within the songs the tempos shift and slide across each other constantly.) The thing is that this is that rarity of an album where you relax more into the world here the closer you listen. Some albums need to wash over you, some need to wait for you to snatch at the dangled melodic hooks. Others, like this, need you to apply yourself to the detail and the pathways they walk. But the effort is rewarded threefold.
Detailed, strangely enchanting, and intellectual; Low Materialism is a definite curiosity you should take the time to decide if it is a path you wish to follow. Treasures and knowledge nestle within.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 