Spectres
Dead

The album that the Spectres released last year didn't particularly thrill me. Yes, overall I liked it and I also recall writing positively about it as a new chapter in the history of shoegaze music with obvious references to the masters My Bloody Valentine, but as a band that in some songs like 'The Sky Of All Places' and 'Family' sounded like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club played at the speed of light and like the long noise sessions of 'The Purgatory' and 'Sea of Trees' were a kind of exorcism ritual and with which, by surpassing every sound barrier, the Spectres overcame death as a sign of rebirth and a kind of renewal.

Can a remix album sound better and somehow complete an original work? On the terrifying cover of 'Dying,' this man was depicted drowning, floundering in struggle against nature trying to stay alive before ending up suffocated. Essentially, he was dying. So the title of this new release (via Sonic Cathedral) could only be 'Dead,' which is precisely the remixed version of 'Dying' and not only that. The members of Spectres and the band as a whole are in fact involved in a multitude of projects and therefore consider their music as something open and as such, it should be seen in a larger context than just listening. This is thus not just simply a remix album, but precisely and also for all these reasons, the inevitable sequel to the original album. What happens afterward.

A lot of artists are involved in the project. Each remix is the work of a different musician, and each of them possibly provides their personal contribution while trying at the same time to operate within a context that still gives the work a unique meaning. The result is definitely successful in my opinion, because the album remains a unique and compact work, where we can still hear a certain sequentiality and correlation between the different tracks. Paradoxically, it would also be more compact and listenable than the original album, which, as mentioned, at times was even deliberately on the verge of unlistenable due to the noise fury demonstrated in certain moments.

There are several, then, who have contributed their part. It's pointless to mention them all here. Suffice it to say that each comes in some way from a different musical reality and still offers their contribution based on their wealth of experiences and their attitude. The best episodes in my opinion are what the Hookworms did with 'The Sky Of All Places' and Andy Bell (Ride) with 'Sea of Trees,' without a doubt the best tracks of the album. Robert Hampson of Loop makes an already difficult song like 'Mirror' even more noisy and disturbing than the original version, Factory Floor turn 'Sink' into a kind of hypnotic dubstep dance, while 'This Purgatory' revised by Blood Music sounds like a brutal techno track, sharp as metal, while in the Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai) version it opens with an almost Joy Division attitude (it's impossible not to think of 'Atmosphere') before it opens up into typical post-rock explosions and digressions.

So it seems there is life after death. Why not. At least I want to believe it. Surely there are a bunch of ghosts and spectres that hover around us and penetrate right into our soul and thus somehow perform a sort of renewal and change within ourselves and of what we are. The Spectres, for their part, probably do not sing exactly of redemption and resurrection, but what we know for sure is that the man on the cover of 'Dying' has ultimately passed on, to use a euphemism, yet here we are a year later still talking about him. May his soul then rest in peace and may the demons within and around us protect us from our sins. Amen.