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Mêlée, "Bare Those Excellent Teeth, pt. II"
Despite sharing a rhythm section with Graveyards, this Mêlée release feels like a completely different unit. Having recorded Bare those Excellent Teeth pt. I as part of the Graveyards trio, Ben Hall and Hans Buetow have utterly revitalised the idea. With Mêlée's third member, Nate Wooley on trumpet replacing John Olson's sometimes barbaric saxophone, the slate is cleared.
With Olson always having the capacity to punk things out, Wooley seems to be much more in line with the album's (and trio's) plan to map out space. The trumpet's intrinsically more mournful and contemplative nature means there is more room for whorls of both melody and harsh tones.The slither and scratch of boiled cymbals begins like buzzing flies, the horn edging into the middle ground only to leave a picture of separate elements spread miles apart. Even when these lines cross, sometimes even following each other, there is an eerie dislocation to Mêlée.
The deep murderous cave sound of the tympani dominates the first side, the cello's rough strokes sounding at points like they have been wracked by an electronic pulse racked by shivers. There is so much space across the second side of the LP that the music begins to feel like slipped memories. Moments of playing hint at ideas to run in the silence, the brain beginning to fill in the blanks from Mêlée's seeds.
