Rainmaker/Øjne
Rainmaker/Øjne - Split

The fact is, I should be leaving the house in a couple of minutes, so there's no time to write something that makes even the slightest sense, reread, check the passages. I have to jot down everything haphazardly, without order and precision. Go along with the rhythm of the music, deconstruct and try to minimize the damage. Or maybe just remain dazed and write the same, mesmerized and nestled in the brevity and absolute splendor of this split between two underground realities that are pushing to surface in a scene where you always find new scenarios to dive into and never look back. They are the Rainmaker, from Sweden with fury. They are Øjne from Italy with equal fury, dear Steinbeck. Inside there's less than 10 minutes of screamo, but I don't care; there's enough to write about. I'll be brief: grab it. It's short, it's damn incisive, and yes, everything works like a charm.

Long live globalization. The guys from Eslöv land their blow, dealing a punch to the face with French sounds. It's the weight of the shadows, "Le Poids Des Ombres" that leads the way to "Da Qualche Parte, Nel Momento Giusto" where the only Danish thing is the moniker. I can tell you this, repeating it: it's all very beautiful. Yeah, it might not be a thought as articulated as David Foster Wallace, actually, it seems like it came out of discounted Kinder snacks, but what more can you say? The melancholic harmonies that are nothing like spring; instead, they catapult you into autumn where the orange of the leaves devours the sunset of the last summer. Emotions swallowed and left transparent in the apathy and nostalgia of a whipping wind that bothers the eyes, obstructs the view, and echoes the blind fury of the schizophrenic bursts of drums and guitars that reveal a constant restlessness. The voices are the ones, you know, I tell you old school screamo like Saetia and you can't help but brace yourself for the exasperated scratches, boiling in dead zones and wavering in fragile spoken word. It's not even worth mentioning calm before the storm; it's just a way where Rainmaker cradles a hope that burns inexorably and where Øjne tries to catch their breath, breathe to encapsulate themselves in tormented escalations. There's resignation, but there are also lips trying to smile, to see beyond and turn the situation around.

Øjne's track is echoing in my headphones, and I look at my wallet open, there, thrown on the bed. And then, amen, I decide to take a different angle to close the review of this split which, just to remind you, is unmissable (besides, it's free/pay what you want on Bandcamp). I see train tickets, restaurant receipts, polaroid photos. Many, too many, pieces of paper with faded sentences probably made with a black biro. I know, I'm a human case, but my wallet is sort of like that. A collection of ephemeral memories I don't want to throw away, but that I always carry with me: for weeks, months, years, and okay, it happens that at the end of March, I left, far from everything and everyone. From ties intertwined for years. A change of direction I've desired, wanted, but that comes with damn treacherous nostalgia. Seeing words sketched on slips between a dollar and a quarter, well, it's quite a hit, believe me. Fragments of a life I feel distant, which at the same time is near, but that cannot be there for the force of things in a game of oxymorons and mirrors. So it happens that I find myself there, preserving the words on squared slips as if they were an original Cezanne. They must not disappear. I must believe they will remain forever, beyond the time that kidnaps and distances. And in all this, the last minute of Øjne's piece plays, and so I wave the white flag:

"But time has passed quickly, and if I had to erase everything//I'd at least try to keep these faded train tickets//all expired for years. I'd pretend they're still valid,
that I wouldn't get fined//that at the terminus there'd be someone standing waiting for me//unfazed by the cold and the delays."

Damn it, this phrase is mine. And the last minute of this track, not to be patriotic, is the highest point of this split. Sorry Rainmaker, I love your track too, but now at April seventeenth, two thousand and fifteen, twenty-two twenty-two Øjne won it all, calibrating in such a small space a liberating screamo that explodes and creates yet another piece for a bright future (which I already wished them after Undici/Dodici). Well, more than a review, it's the outburst of a fifteen-year-old? I'll give you that, but as I said, I have to leave, I don't want to delete anything, take this writing for what it is. End of the line.