Artist: Martre
Title: To Scarred To Resist, Too Scared To Exist
Type: EP
Label: Digital
Yes, my method for finding stuff I want to review can be incredibly normal (bands I know, PR, band gets in touch) or incredibly random (scroll, scroll, scroll, WTF…?) but also when someone follows me and is a musician I always go and have a peek at least. Hence Martre, a one man project from Denmark. And when you discover the new release is an EP based on an apocalyptic cult involving…er… cats…. and that it’s actually based on real events (check out the story of Sheryl Ruthven and the Freedom Fire Ministries.) Well, you have to give that a listen surely. I mean the cats may be watching me so better forewarned I say. It is also listed as ‘experimental’ and at Ave Noctum I was one of probably only two people who put their hands up for the truly mad shit. Because I like having my brain messed with it seems.
Ooookay. Track one is ‘Too Scarred To Resist’. We get mid tempo drum beats, a strange noise crawling around the background; deep and dense and distorted but separated. It’s soft sound is perfect for building a real sense of unease, of preparing for a descent into madness or chaos. Slowly a voice begins, a capture, a breathless, distraught woman’s voice low in the mix. The words babble, seem to get lost in their own thread, mostly incoherent sentences joined together until the last words are clear of noise but still difficult to unravel. And the black metal noise suddenly rolls over her. The sound is superb; leaving me in that space shifting between the cacophony of Black Cilice and the sheer off kilter world view of The/An Axis Of Perdition or Blut Aus Nord when they went off the rails with Mort (still my favourite album of theirs) and maintains a suspicion of simply being…wrong…
‘Delusional Drive’ comes in fast and howling. The riff skitters along, the drum relentless…and then it twists. Voice? Maybe. The guitar seems to pause now and then, as though looking around for a point of reference before the howling, maniacal vocals pull them back. More sampling of the ranting, insistent voice of I guess Sheryl Ruthven, things break down and only the drumming persists with shape.
‘Swarm Of Incomprehension’ (aren’t these titles superb?) offers piano, a whisper of choral voices gradually subdued by a buzzing sound, the music taking the feel of a swarm approaching and slowly, inevitably overwhelming. Drum beats. A voice that growls and mutters and snarls. It’s a truly dark and unsettlingly lonely sound, the kind I haven’t heard since that Rougarou album. It’s broken, it’s lost and all it has left is the howl drifting away as the swarm recedes.
Finally, ‘Too Scared To Exist’. A slow and bleak drone of keyboard sounds, the odd note, a hint of melody whilst every other part of this space is taken by a slow, sombre and distorted guitar and harsh vocals. It presses up against you, whispers wrong things to you, allows the realisation that you have indeed taken a truly wrong turn somewhere. Too late.
This is my first meeting with Martre, and they did release a full album earlier this year which I will have to investigate. But this EP is strange, twisted, unsettling and unconventional. But it seethes with a singular vision and intent, mixes gentle sounds set against coruscating walls of noise and shifts and twists and never lets you seetle into a structure. It is the sound of mental confusion, collapse and best of all it provokes. It provokes thought.
Damn but if you’re after something out of kilter this is definitely for you. Love it.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 