Darsombra – Climax Community
Darsombra – Climax Community CD (Exile On Mainstream)
More and more bizarre genres seem to be foisted upon us by eager press releases and wannabe music press journalists. The latest utterly ridiculous genre I’m expected to have a go on then is “Transcendental Rock”! What for Debbie Harry’s sake is Transcendental Rock? I imagine double act Darsombra, to be fair to them, had nowt to do with this bonkers labelling but they are fully responsible for the odd mantras that make up this epic 75 minute, four track collection of colossal oddness that makes up their debut “album”. Now I’m no connoisseur of the genre but have dabbled in the experimental end of the music world known as ambient. In the mid ‘90’s a friend of mind baffled me by having Jam and Spoon’s album on constant rotation when I just wanted to hear the Ramones or Sham. I’ve warmed to the peculiar tendencies of Phantom Limb Management or Gasp where ambient noises meld with power violence and I’ve even dipped my toe in the waters of “noise”. Australia’s Church of Hysteria and Colostomy Baguette recently arriving on my door mat and inducing a migraine in the thrash parlour that usually plays host to the likes of Capitalist Casualties and Gauze. It’s sort of opened my mind to the ethereal and downright bizarre end of the spectrum … Ambient, because that’s what I’d call the first 23 minute opus, as a genre however is not really what I’d call my comfort zone so when this challenging piece arrived I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly wouldn’t label Transcendental Rock. No, that’s just silly. I imagine that was conjured up on account of the fact they are instrumentalists rather than electronic blip bloppers. The opening track “Roaming the Periphery” takes you off in to space. On a space ship travelling millions of miles across a vast emptiness. It could be the soundtrack to the perpetual snooze of suspended animation like in Red Dwarf or Alien. A ponderously throbbing and swirling collection of wave after wave of gravity-less, formless orming about that moves slower than plate tectonics. I’m very intrigued. It reminds me of the sort of out there, cerebral soundscapes Brian Eno creates when he’s not trying to turn U2 experimental or Earth at their most minimal. Second track is a bit of red herring. “Acoustic ambient”? Someone, with a long white beard, sat on a rock at the top of a misty mountain, plucking away in a 70’s rock type fashion on a battered six string while assembled hippies and fairies and elves and unicorns dance the night away … It’s only a prelude however to the head scrambling, headline act of the vast 18 minute slumber that is final track “Thunder Thighs”. Building from a drip fed ringing guitar, in to a monotonous mantra and collapsing in slow motion in to a mind blowing hum that goes nowhere and everywhere for about fifteen minutes, this is the nearest you’ll get to drugs without taking them. I’m a convert. Marv Gadgie
