Babalong
#01

"Babalong is a collective of students and graduates in the field of art and music technology. It is a project that blends the artistry of musicians with poetry and performative installations. Our aim is to slowly anti-write, decompose and unplay, so to erase every time the methods and paths which lie prior to the actual location. We work with guests and session musicians to get what we want and vice versa. Since the summer of 2012, Babalong has been writing and recording music- and sound-pieces that will gradually be reassembled and sifted for further polish and finnissage. Plans for the release of an album have been postponed, if not entirely abandoned due to the vast fissures between all the applied writing and recording styles. We still, however, have the ambition to release a hard copy of some kind in the future. We will just slowly release battalions for the time being, like precursors of an army."

I wanted to quote the words written in black and white on their website, partly because it sounds cool to introduce a review this way, and partly because the spirit that pervades the EP couldn't be described any better. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems that Holland is not only the land of tulips, the passes for the doors of perception, the windmills. It is an immense reservoir in constant ferment: academic, cultural, musical. These six guys (but the roster seems to be continuously expanding and open to anyone who wants to collaborate with them) have given life to a war machine.

"Bakery Pope" first of all. Relentless drums, indecipherable sounds, a voice that seems indifferent to everything happening around it. Suddenly guitars, strangled, abrasive. Then verses, maybe coughs. The voice continues relentlessly to disregard it all. The percussion resumes, like a jackhammer, as if a madman with a chainsaw were approaching your bedroom door and you distinctly felt his threatening movements. All of a sudden, suspension. Even violins. Final cut, abrupt. Even just this piece of record would be enough to throw you into total darkness. You feel disassembled. But no, it’s not enough. The music box of "Things Adding Up" arrives to completely knock you out. Again that voice, so lyrical, steady, ethereal. The rest is composition, in the true sense of the word. They play with Lego. Almost an absence of melodies. They are more than anything sounds, put together to form a kind of Frankenstein. Here, I’m talking about "Lisp," the third track. I couldn’t even describe it. No, really, it’s impossible. Almost eight minutes of I-don’t-know-what.

Only three tracks, about twenty minutes. Usually, they flow by quite quickly. In this case, it will feel like you’ve listened to a double CD with special (or spectral?) content attached. Dense and black as pitch dripping over intricate steel scaffolding.

Five stars, no question.  

Approved by David Lynch!