Album of the day: Skullflower – Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament

Lovingly pinced from The Obelisk: What starts out as a litmus test for how much drone punishment a listener can handle not so quickly becomes an encompassing ritual nearly religious in its scope. Skullflower’s Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament (Neurot) is a double-disc, 12 track excursion to the outer limits of instrumental noise. There are no songs, no catchy choruses, no pop structures. UK-based guitarist Matthew Bower continues his 20-plus year run of unbridled experimentation, now as the sole creative force within the band.

It is, for most who’d even be brave enough to take it on, completely unlistenable. Bower makes no attempt to meet his audience halfway or do anything that might make his music more accessible. This, for a small but loyal cult segment of the underground, is precisely what has earned him such acclaim these past decades in his various projects, and with Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament, the idea seems not so much to expand the horizons of noise — because Bower’s already done that — but rather to engage in the rites of the unhinged and to make a work that, apart from the already-stretched limits of its instrumentation, is truly without borders.

Continue reading: The Obelisk » Blog Archive » Pushing the Limits of Distortion with Skullflower.
(Special thanks to JJ Koczan for his kind permission)

Tags: album of the day, JJ Koczan, Matthew Bower, Neurot Recordings, Noise, Skullflower, Strange Keys to Untune Gods Firmament, The Obelisk

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under 2010, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.