Grim - Magnolia´s Dream
A new album from one of the veterans of industrial and power electronics. Grim has only one member, Jun Konagaya who also started the cult act called White Hospital. If you don´t know White Hospital, then I would highly recommend their album Holocaust from 1984. Sort of like SPKs Information Overload Unit! But anyways, after White Hospital then Jun Konagaya started Grim in 1986 with the debut Folk Music. And the act is still going strong, this one is the latest and is the 13th album by this act.
The album has been released by Steinklang, and has come out on limited vinyl, tape, and CD. My copy is on CD, and the CD is limited to 200 copies. A really nice and solid digipack with tons of intriguing artwork inside. Now the album has been named Magnolia´s Dream, not sure who Magnolia is (any help?). What you get (and see) on the artwork, is some ghostly (and creepy) looking humanoid-figure on various locations/photos. Looks like a child in some vintage Halloween costume of some sort. On the CD tray itself, there is a photo showing dolls (or cakes?) showing the same figure. Strangely disturbing, I have a feeling that the concept of the album smells of Japanese ghost-folk-lore of some sort. I think that each track has been represented in the booklet, with a photo/picture for each track. There are 10 tracks on the album, the first five tracks are called the Opium tracks, and the last 5 tracks are called the Syan tracks. It all looks pretty interesting so far!
The first track Opium I has a kind of weird and surreal nursery rhyme that meets dungeon synth sort of vibe. Some highly altered spoken words are being added, not sure of the language... maybe Japanese. Some cool and haunting noisy soundscapes in the background as well. Love the intro, really weird and a good ear-opener if you ask me.
The second track Opium II jumps straight into a kind of rhythmic industrial noise-scape. Really love how the vocals have been done here, love the way the voice has been altered beyond recognition. I think there are vocals of some sort, sounds like a demon screaming from some other dimension. There is also a simple melody in all this. Very epic sounding, and very ritualistic piece.
The third track gets even weirder! Some Asian shaman guy chants the demons away, while a technoid techno-house rhythm is being added to raise the tension. I know it sounds kind of off, but for some reason, it actually sounds cool. Excellent rhythm with some added noise here and there, chopped up and all that... strangely catchy.
From here we jump straight into the first Cyan track VI. Further into the surreal landscape of Japanese ghost tales. Monotone organ synths and chanting vocals with lots of cool echoes. Some extra soundscapes layers are in there as well. Another track with a slightly dungeon-synth vibe, or am I thinking funeral-synth vibe here? It sounds very good and has a cool atmosphere and everything.
The next track Cyan VII starts as a complete mess of surreal noisescapes and rhythmic noise being mixed together. After some seconds you are starting to realize that the chaos is actually pretty well organized, and then comes the cool disturbed (screaming) vocals. Some of this stuff could actually remind me of stuff like early Dive and Synapscape.
Cyan VIII the next track, is a more... minimalistic sort of a track. Thumping and primitive electronic-based barbaric rhythms with some really cool noisy sounds follow the rhythm quite nicely. Some intense (extra) layers are added later on, with a more screaming sort of effect. Hard to describe this simple track and the effect it is having on me, give it a listen and expect your jaw to drop!
I am just gonna reveal to you that all the other tracks which I have not reviewed are also very good tracks! An untraditional thing in the world of industrial and power electronics. Lots of elements/styles on this album, and I love the variation incredibly much. Not really power electronics, but closer to primal and raw industrial. You could compare it to the early recordings by MZ.412 (Malfeitor) and Dissecting Table as well. But then again, you also have those interesting synth melodies in there as well... which makes the release quite unique and interesting. It´s Japanese, but not Japanoise. It´s Grim, one of a kind!
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