AA.VV.
Song of the Silent Land

Song of the Silent Land is the first compilation from one of the major players in the modern unconventional rock scene: the Constellation Records of Montreal, Canada.
Distant from the patterns of pop music from Elvis onwards, CST includes among its artists some of the reference names in the field of rock research, capable of creating around it, since the second half of the nineties, a sparse but loyal following of enthusiasts who have kept it alive in the dark and luminous era of peer to peer.

The Constellation label is one of those catalogs that a purist post-rocker dreams of owning in its entirety, and while from a distribution perspective it is obviously necessary to rely on other labels, especially for the European market, CST does not skimp on efforts and creativity concerning the artwork and packaging of its CDs, which are always well crafted and innovative.
Like this collection of tracks that stands among numerous other compilations, as paganism stood to Christianity in the times of the Church Fathers.

It opens with Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, offering an alternative version of a piece from her latest and only album, stripped down yet equally evocative of a feminine noir folk that in recent years has offered valuable precedents. The Toronto-made combo Do Make Say Think offers a summarizing mix of their Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn in five captivating minutes, ranging between dub, industrial percussion, arpeggiated guitars, and free-jazz rhythm section: a beautiful chaos. In line with their recent productions, Silver Mt. Zion presents an eight-minute long dissonant track, and the Jewish folk of Black Ox Orkestar – sung in Yiddish, an archaic German interspersed with words of Slavic and Hebrew origins – perhaps for this reason is not as relaxing as the piece by Sofa, a necessary hybrid in the end between the weary dragging of Low on Things We Lost in the Fire and the tormented singing of Ian Curtis.
Sackville, seemingly a close relative of the desolate solo Steve Von Till, does not leave a significant mark among these artists, and the dub background around the theme of noise-rock by Fly Pan Am does not elevate the level of a collection of tracks that plays its best card at the end. Preceded by an alternative mix of a song from the latest Frankie Sparo, here is the closing of this first CST collection with the outro from a French concert by Godspeed You Black Emperor!, gifting seven minutes and thirty seconds according to their conception of rock, where strings, percussion, feedback-heavy guitars, and street sounds blend into a single pure and wild flow at the same time, sweet and swirling, progressive and circular. It is pointless to prolong.

Thus, avant-garde, and in various forms and colors.
There is little good music that follows the main circuits, which, inexplicably or not, sells well. We therefore choose to share the words of a sage lost in the ether - "the exaltation for names of tertiary artistic quality, due to the degeneration of the radio programming and the propaganda circuit that has now contaminated even the nighttime programming of a multinational television station that claims to be the spokesperson for young music in the fragile television system, is a symptom of the severe musical illiteracy of our times" - in clear and evident alignment with the position expressed in the manifesto of Constellation Records, published online on the official website of the record company.