Piehead
Mnemosyne's debut album builds slowly with a solid if sleepy foundation of guitar, bass, and drums that wouldn't sound out of place in the Kranky or Constellation stables. The Toronto trio is fronted (if that's really the right word) by experimental guitarist Aidan Baker, whose voice on the title track rises just barely above a whisper in a style reminiscent of early Labradford. But from there, Mnemosyne depart from the somnambulant formula of muted minimalism by swelling guitars up with distortion and kicking in drums and crashing cymbals. The result is a bit darker, more psychadelic, and more varied than their post-rock forebares, but it also results in something that probably has a much wider appeal. It wouldn't be far off to imagine my stoner friends from High School who went to Pink Floyd laser light shows getting seriously into Mnemosyne's hypnotic twirls of guitar and dubbed-out percussion, but recovering goths will also appreciate the atmosphere of tracks like "Dark Grove" and "Unreal Space." Thankfully, Mnemosyne seem less concerned with whether they are impressing the weepy Projekt crowd or the Drag City chin strokers, and they carry on making moody, genre-hopping space rock. Occassionally, as on the 12 minute album closer "Aqualisp," the instrumentation gets a bit too dry and literal, causing the psyche-improv to drift uncomfortably close to jam-band territory where it feels like every instrument needs room for a solo. Luckily, Rodin Columb's straightforward bass holds everything together just long enough for the band to get back on track as they rip into the loudest creshendo (saved somewhat predictably for the end). Though they never really achieve all out ROCK, they do manage to crank the volume, distortion, and delay on everything to give the album's trip a final dose of hash-fueled paranoia. Alhough Mnemosyne can easily be seen as a confluence of influences that have done this sort of thing before, their own take on a soundtrack for that bad-acid trip is well worth exploring. It somehow manages to be both familiar and disorienting at the same time which is kind of creepy, but good.
Mnemosyne's debut album builds slowly with a solid if sleepy foundation of guitar, bass, and drums that wouldn't sound out of place in the Kranky or Constellation stables. The Toronto trio is fronted (if that's really the right word) by experimental guitarist Aidan Baker, whose voice on the title track rises just barely above a whisper in a style reminiscent of early Labradford. But from there, Mnemosyne depart from the somnambulant formula of muted minimalism by swelling guitars up with distortion and kicking in drums and crashing cymbals. The result is a bit darker, more psychadelic, and more varied than their post-rock forebares, but it also results in something that probably has a much wider appeal. It wouldn't be far off to imagine my stoner friends from High School who went to Pink Floyd laser light shows getting seriously into Mnemosyne's hypnotic twirls of guitar and dubbed-out percussion, but recovering goths will also appreciate the atmosphere of tracks like "Dark Grove" and "Unreal Space." Thankfully, Mnemosyne seem less concerned with whether they are impressing the weepy Projekt crowd or the Drag City chin strokers, and they carry on making moody, genre-hopping space rock. Occassionally, as on the 12 minute album closer "Aqualisp," the instrumentation gets a bit too dry and literal, causing the psyche-improv to drift uncomfortably close to jam-band territory where it feels like every instrument needs room for a solo. Luckily, Rodin Columb's straightforward bass holds everything together just long enough for the band to get back on track as they rip into the loudest creshendo (saved somewhat predictably for the end). Though they never really achieve all out ROCK, they do manage to crank the volume, distortion, and delay on everything to give the album's trip a final dose of hash-fueled paranoia. Alhough Mnemosyne can easily be seen as a confluence of influences that have done this sort of thing before, their own take on a soundtrack for that bad-acid trip is well worth exploring. It somehow manages to be both familiar and disorienting at the same time which is kind of creepy, but good. samples:
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