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Rating: How can the paths of musicians so seemingly distant intersect? The demonic Napalm Death M.J.Harris, later an obscure manipulator in Scorn, and the voice of the cult band Eyeles In Gaza, Martyn Bates.
Whatever the case may be, "Murder Ballads" (Drift) is the first chapter dated 1995 of a dark trilogy conceived by our bold heroes and published by the now-defunct Florence-based "Musica Maxima Magnetica"
Dark Folk Ballads for lost souls.
Harris with his machines creates mortuary dark ambient, claustrophobic drone backgrounds. Bates with his celestial voice tells cruel tales of death, horror, murder, torture, incest.
A sonic short circuit that disorients at first listening.
A pure soul, child of incest between brother and sister. A lover hunter kills his only mad love, seeing in it a beautiful swan. Sadistic thieves of old ladies.
Drone folk, ambient dark folk. Our heroes dig into the earth, get dirty with mud and blood, look their characters in the eyes, speak with their voices. They are the lost souls buried two meters underground. Unlike a now-defunct pure animal, now a character illuminated by divine light who roamed the same territories with divas, keeping his designer clothes clean, without messing his hair.
Harris and Bates distill dark pain, dig with their nails, pull souls out of the earth, and make them tell their sorrows. With lugubrious drones and celestial voices, they resurrect the painful soul of the "murder ballads." The melodies are long, difficult, not meant to please. But although they move sinuously with the dark Harris, they have their own sweet heart, hard to grasp but it will be authentic "illumination."
In my opinion, a lost masterpiece, with original raw modernity, manages to capture the tragic spirit that often colors traditional English folk with blood.
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