MT Mountain – Aplomb
I don’t really embrace the idea of “mood music“. I hate that songs should fit strictly to a particular moment in your life. This is why you end up with U2’s One being played at weddings, at Marvin Gaye tunes soundtracking romantic comedies.
However, if there’s one label I trust wholly to play before I travel to the Land of Dreams, it is Krautrock. Now, the term, of course, was coined, partly as a not-so-subtle insult, by the British press to designate experimental, minimalist music, usually featuring electronic flourishes, made by German groups. I personally listen to Neu’s first album religious before bed, just as Iggy Pop advised us to do.
Thankfully this style has had such sustained influence that even today it inspires artists across the world and the moniker, as nonsensical as it, has not yet been retired. MT Mountain approaches their single Aplomb with the same precision and smug attitude as Harmonia, Kraftwerk or Can. The sharp edges of the grooves, however, get sweetened by stonerish vocals that make the single sound like an engineer student’s druggy spring break.
The Nightmare Generator – Nightmares For Children (And Other Stories)
You know that a band managing to fit in the word “nightmare” three times into their title and a giant eye in their artwork is either very serious, or a bit of goof. With a song clocking in over half an hour, you will need to clear your calendar to find out which one that is.
The children’s whispers of the intro and the spooky, sung nursery rhymes are reminiscent of modern B-movies, but there’s something compelling about the band’s willingness to play slow, slower, slowest doomy riffs for the 30 minutes duration.
Dear listener, it’s not only until the five-minute mark, but I also have to warn you that things really start cooking. The calamity proclaiming instrumental begins being assisted by walls of feedback. They follow that up with ominous stops, the introduction of rain noises and strange chants. The band does its best to play to the terrorizing image they advertise on the sleeve. There are moments when this sounds genuinely great and frightening, even though there are others where the group does seem a bit too much in love with all the ideas that a stoned-out brain can produce and forget to edit a bit.
