Thursday, May 10, 2012

Rale - Some Kissed Charms That Would Not Protect Them [Isounderscore]

I wrote a little bit about this thoroughly awesome and devastating Rale record when I got it last summer and then I sort of disappeared from the internet for awhile. Hopefully, I've learned some really heartwarming and enlightening life lessons since then which will allow me to elucidate the values of this LP in mindblowing fashion. Yeah... Well, I'll give it my best shot anyway.
From the opening moments, Some Kissed Charms That Would Not Protect Them feels epic. It feels big. Not expansive but created with diamond-hard focus.
The first movement of sorts features 30 seconds of what feels like pure sound. It feels like an object, something that is in physical existence. It's ominous and captivating and shortly recedes back into silence. After a period, Bill Hutson brings the sound back before it once again dissipates into silence, giving the LP its own breathing pattern. The next movement leads into a slightly more airy, if no less dread-inducing, environment. There's a gentle hum and whispers of acoustic sounds before a mammoth full-bodied drone rises and crests consuming everything around it like an aural black hole. It relinquishes control briefly before subsuming its surroundings once more. Some classic Rale crackle bubbles to the top fighting to survive the monolithic swells.
This record makes me think of space. Not the kitsch, retro-future, "let's see the laser light show at the planetarium" space. Actual fucking space. Endless lightyears of non-existence. An infinite vacuum of nothing.
This is mood-altering; this is oppressive.
The second side dives right in, pulling no punches. With the initial crescendo I feel like a spaceship entering a new, unkind atmosphere feeling sheet metal being peeled and ripped away layer by layer. The sounds exist in an area of uncertainty. Unsure when they may be grappled with, usurped or disappear completely. The second side provides more stability than the first, with Hutson choosing to expand and remold sounds rather than vanquish them to begin anew as he does throughout the first side. When the album reaches it's apex, he eloquently constructs a passage of subtle but desperately inviting beauty crowning it ultimately with the thorny crackle of dying circuits. 
The final moments of Some Kissed Charms That Would Not Protect Them capture the point when you've finally reached the sun, disintegrated, descended into hell with no option of redemption.
This is among the most complex works of drone I've ever heard and it's a true masterpiece. This record will reach deep inside and intoxicate you if you let it. If you commit yourself, listening to this can be a ravaging emotional experience.
The LP is housed in an absolutely gorgeous jacket (the image doesn't begin to do it justice) by Brandon Nickell; it's the total package. Only 30 copies left from the label. Don't sleep on this, the time is now my friends.

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