CD Review: Siiiii - Ancient

Written by Peer Lebrecht Monday, 20 February 2012 16:13

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Artist: Siiiii
Title: Ancient
Genre: Post Punk / Goth
Release Date: 27th January 2012
Label: afmusic

Album Review

There is a spectre hunting the airwaves... SIIIII seems to be an odd entity. Wrapped in blackness, riddles, question marks and a blurred historical immaterialness, it is something like a white spot, Terra Incognita on the musical map. There is that strange band name (taken from Burroughs 1961´s novel “Softmachine” - Anybody out there, who dares to know what it is to pronounce like?!?) and the fact, that SIIIII were already founded in 1983 in Sheffield, but their debut was released not until 23 years later (If only Burroughs could know about that 23-synchronicity!) plus additional six years before afmusic made it online available for a general public. What a long and hard road!

It was no one else than the “éminence grise” of Goth and dark music the journalist Mick Mercer, who appreciated the band’s capability, pulling it back to daylight two decades after the split in 1986 (with the helping hand of Germany’s DJ-icon Oliver “Cyberpagan” Krapp), evoking an revival and the first (unseen) release of ‘Ancient’. And now here it is in its 2012 re-released shape and while listening to it, it feels like a kind of time travel, encompassing the years 83-86, when SIIIII was very active on stages before the missing success lead to that 20 years´ pause. Let me introducing say, that it is not an acoustic stroll to enter the albums atmospheric chambers, cause we’re turning pages to a period when something we call casually “Post Punk” today had still to shape and outline itself.

In some way it seems that SIIIII’s kind of music is the pioneering (Just for orientation - we land two years before ‘First And Last And Always’ and further two years before NEPHILIM’s first output!) missing link in the triptych, that would become the source for Goth, Deadrock, Darkwave and today’s Post Punk a few cadences later, adding the darkness, disturbing morbidity and a proper pinch of self-destruction (like their more famous colleagues from BAUHAUS or Cave’s BIRTHDAY PARTY) to the cold and melancholic emotional roller coaster ride, celebrated then by bands like THE CURE or Siouxsie’s BANSHEES, and the hurting nihilism with its empty and pale self-despaired anger, as to find in the music of JOY DIVISION (as one example).

Just in the album’s opening track ‘Split’ we are confronted with that disturbing musical language, whose sound takes some getting used to. Dull bass lines are curling among a monotone tribal drum-pattern, always careful not to pay too much deference to the speed, flanked by sawing guitars, which seem to tolerate the laws of harmony and rhythm, overshadowed by Paul Devine’s vocals, which howl and yell like a wounded animal in a trap. ‘Conception’ contrasts with a great melodic melancholy and a skilful emotional vocal performance, ranging from Dark to Cold Wave á la ASYLUM PARTY or MARY GOES ROUND with a bittersweet sadness. So like ‘Dust’, with its impelling drums and the great conflation of spherical guitars and roaring basses. ‘Still Waters’ bends the bow from Dark Rock to some dirty kind of Rock’n’Roll with an energy, that seems to blur structure and virtuosity, ending into a five-minute ebullition.

It’s obviously that one of the albums gripping features is its variety and its shades of emotional translation. Lets take ‘Statue’, a gloomy pearl, reduced to a side-by-side walk of the vocals vulnerable divestiture and a simple, but effective bass line (a few songs later to find again in a lovely piano-version), what is seamlessly followed by ‘Rictus’ with its guitar-based surface, the dominating bass shapes and the combination of energetic despair and anger. Let me still highlight the swirling ‘Equator’, flamboyant by the nervous, “funk”-like guitars and the spoken intonation, ‘Fixing’, what plays with the unforeseen, like a blues rhythm and the use of a harmonica (!) and the great ‘Over’, what feels like a melting pot of Art- and Dark Rock, drifting in the realms of that avant-garde, some of the 4AD bands made flourish. To much substance for an assumed spectre!

Let me conclude: ‘Ancient’ is a history lesson, that is more than revealing and instructive. It’s not only a must-have for all devotees of real oldschool Goth and Post Punk, but it also a historical revelation, shining a light on the origins today’s Goth, Post Punk and Darkwave music has come from and the way it went. With a little more fortune SIIIII could have become similarly influential as JOY DIVISION, KILLING JOKE or the above mentioned bands, cause their musical stylistics were part of a progress the contemporary (alternative) music is deeply indebted to. And even if the album is named ‘Ancient’ and the songs it contained are more than 20 years old, it is exciting and stirring to listen to it, cause (beside the creepy quality of the recordings) it sounds surprisingly fresh and innovative and manages to stand the pace with the genre’s present state, it ironically assisted to pave the way for. There are rumours about new material of SIIIII and this could become really interesting!


Tracklist

01. Split
02. Conception
03. Overgrown Eyes
04. Dust
05. Still Waters
06. Speaking in Tongues
07. Statue
08. Rictus
09. Equator
10. Is Still
11. Fixing
12. Springheel'd Jack
13. Over
14. Dust (Version)
15. Statue (Piano Version)


Line-up

Paul Devine – vocals
Angie Holmes – bass
Mark Holmes – guitar
Wayne Furniss – drums


Website

http://www.siiiii.co.uk


Cover Picture




Rating

Music: 8
Sound: 6
Total: 7 / 10