Title: Rosary
Artist: Parade Ground
Genre: Electronic
Release Date: 2nd July 2007
Label: Sleepwalking Records
Album Review
There might be a few people who actually remember PARADE GROUND, the electronic project of Belgian brothers Pierre & Jean Marc Pauly started in 1983. Even so their discography is quite small and besides some 7” and 12” outputs they’ve only released one full-length album. After a dormant period of nearly 20 years, ‘Rosary’ the second album was finished in 2007, produced by FRONT 242 member Patrick Codenys.
One might wonder about the sound, when they put the album into their CD-Player as the sound improvements of the last decades seem to have passed it without a trace and I for one found it a bit odd during the first tracks of my first listen of the album, but the more it progressed the more it became clear to me that this obviously was done on purpose. The sound of ‘Rosary’ is much more like a reminisce, a recollection on the old days of 70s or 80s Post Punk as it’s pretty much like of what the sound reminds at times. The other-worldliness of songs such as the first genuine track ‘Windfall’ appears alien and intriguing at the same time. This track sounds as though it was recorded from a certain distance; the repetitive synthetic drum grooves pound within a mixture of droning; at times wailing chords and dissonant indefinable noises. Maybe another thing that makes the album a bit different and unusual. Each and every track on the album is preceded by a kind of short overture by the name of ‘Rosary I – XV’.
Following ‘Rosary II’ is the second track ‘In The Line of Fire’ either scaring you away or casting a spell on you as the first 40 seconds are a chaotic manifesto of painful, tortured screams, embedded into an endlessly howling wind, before the chaos makes way to the order of drums; in fact the only thing that gives it some kind of order. No real vocals appear, you can only hear calls or screams; a really strange song. Forward to ‘Rosary IV’ and its companion ‘Happy at All’ which, regardless of its rather melodic chant and the orchestral sample in the background, gives me the creeps. Somehow it just sends out cold and unease nevertheless it brings the singer’s good voice to prominence, normally very processed with reverberation; maybe for the purpose of making it sound like a moaning – and therefore hardly understandable.
After the last sound of ‘Rosary’ died away, strange feelings remain of whether this is art or just the mediocre effusions of two musicians. I tend for the first one to be honest. This album takes you down into an abyss where pain and suffering seem to be the only remaining emotion, maybe this is an honest look into the soul of a tortured mind. If you’ve read this review to the bitter end and gotten curious you should check out the snippets on the band’s MySpace profile.
Tracklist
01. Rosary I – 0:36
02. Windfall – 3:46
03. Rosary II – 0:40
04. In the Line of Fire – 4:44
05. Rosary III – 1:10
06. Shail's Burial – 4:21
07. Rosary IV – 0:42
08. Happy at All – 3:48
09. Rosary V – 0:35
10. Naked – 5:53
11. Rosary VI – 0:49
12. Breath – 3:55
13. Rosary VII – 1:14
14. Another Week – 5:51
15. Rosary VIII – 0.44
16. Europe Side Down – 2:54
17. Rosary IX – 0:30
18. Beads – 2:35
19. Rosary X – 0:38
20. Cross – 2:08
21. Rosary XI – 0:24
22. Stutter – 2:58
23. Rosary XII – 0:39
24. Calvary – 4:36
25. Rosary XIII – 0:41
26. Fight Time – 4:42
27. Rosary XIV – 0:40
28. Three Faint Fires – 4:56
29. Rosary XV – 0:35
30. Immaculate – 3:50
Line-up
Pierre and Jean-Marc Pauly.
Website
http://www.parade-ground.net/ / http://www.myspace.com/paradeground
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 7
Extras: -
Total: 7.5
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