Millipede - Full Bloom

Millipede
Full Bloom
(2010, Install)
RIYL = Yellow Swans, The Goslings, Fennesz

Loud. It’s a term whose description is most notably a reference to sound produced at high levels of audible volume. That the term feels uncomfortably lacking when used as a descriptor for Millipede’s latest album, Full Bloom, is telling. This album isn’t simply loud, it’s is deafening. This is one of the few albums that demand a parental advisory sticker (remember those?) for audio abrasiveness alone (notifying Tipper right now). It's the tangible threat of Millipede’s thunderously noisy guitar jarring loose components of one’s inner ear. Despite having listened to the album well over twenty times now, whenever I start listening to Full Bloom, without fail, the sheer audacity of the recordings require that I turn the volume to its lowest level and then slowly ease myself into the uproar. Otherwise, I fear the unbridled raucousness of Millipede’s guitar will cause my headphones to sprout teeth and consume my ears whole. Like boiling a live frog, or something. What? I don’t know. However, the fact that Millipede’s latest (and might I add at this juncture, greatest) album is indisputably, to put it ever so lightly, loud, is not to say that the tonal architecture here is ugly. Do not be fooled into thinking that something so vociferous cannot also be intensely gorgeous, because - my friends - that is exactly what Full Bloom turns out to be. Once you’ve peeled through the oniony layers of this dauntingly strident album, what you’ll find running underneath is almost beyond description in terms of its depth and beauty. Up front, the guitars are shattering like crystal, but the refracted vision that these fractured tones illuminates something wholly unique, and gorgeous. There sits deep within these recordings, that, I’m sure, to 99% of the population can be simply qualified as unbearable noise (“kids these days!”), a Zen that isn’t manageable at softer, more contemplative tones. Full Bloom achieves what all those minimalist drone kids are aiming for, but can never quite attain: something concrete, compelling and enlightening, all at once. Don’t get caught in the crowd that will flippantly label this as just another noise album. I promise, it is so much more.

-Thistle

Millipede on MySpace
Full Bloom via Install

Soft Circle - Full Bloom

Soft Circle
Full Bloom
(01.2007, Eastern Development)
6.5/10

With former calling cards of Black Dice and Lightning Bolt, Hisham Bharoocha’s Soft Circle project should be right down my isle but after months of listening I can’t bring my self to a slam dunk review. Soft Circle’s sound can be rightfully compared to contemporaries like Animal Collective, Boredoms and former band Black Dice, but with all its similarities Full Bloom seems a little too equally contrived a slightly watered down. As a drummer, Bharoocha’s method includes an abundant, restrained use of his drum kit along with swirling guitars and Panda Bear vocals circa Young Prayer. The effect is a sort of ambient spiritualism that you would be likely to find on a White Rainbow album. The elements are all worthy and that is why listening to it has been tricky. Many of the album’s features feel like Soft Circle is a regurgitation of work done when he helped create Beaches & Canyons. That doesn’t mean that Full Bloom is a failure, Beaches & Canyons is incredible source material, but amongst his contemporaries it becomes easy to distinguish Soft Circle’s debut as something of an unnecessary addition to a well trodden path, like a collection of B-sides if you will. Full Bloom is pleasant, it doesn’t step on anyone’s toes (because most are yards ahead), it’s viably enjoyable yet, deep in the back of my mind, no matter how I try to suppress it, there is a little voice in my head whispering “enjoy it while you can, because tomorrow you won’t even remember that you own a Soft Circle album.”

-Mr. Thistle

Soft Circle - "Shimmer"