Chimärendämmerung

In yet another sub-genre over-populated by sound-a-like practitioners, Hototogisu induce reverie via highly personalised, idiosyncratic noise construction. Marcia Bassett (also of Double Leopards, GHQ, Zaika) and Matthew Bower (Sunroof!, Skullflower, Mirag) pursue the flaming infinite, which has led them slowly to disarm their music of any structural rock referent. For example, compare the complex tributaries of blood-noise that flood Chimärendämmerung with the blasted drum pounds scoring the opening of Some Blood Will Stick, a recently-released disc on Important that revives 2004-2005 era recordings. (Both discs are equally great, by the way.) Although the duo’s key drives haven’t changed, their ability to manifest and articulate these drives has seriously intensified in the past two years, with their 2004 double Ghosts from the Sun the beginning of a second phase that saw Hototogisu seriously re-phrasing noise’s language.

Chimärendämmerung engages in slow build; it begins by paddling around in a relative lagoon of (dis)quiet before Bower and Bassett pile more layers of dissonance. The set reaches an apex about 45 minutes through (all tracks are, as ever, untitled) where the heat-wave created by the interaction of viola, guitar and electronics, all maxed with volume and scoured by feedback, spontaneously births an almost entirely new syntax for the duo.