i remember luxor's report from the ultc sessions, and while mixing "unified field", someone asked "can we make this more brutally pop"? and that's how i see ULTC in retrospect - it's a shotgun pop record. there's a lot of strangeness and greatness going on, but someone's pulling a gun and forcing the songs to be...pop. this time, the church went for "can we make this more brutally strange and great". they're heading for utter beauty, beautiful strangeness and beautiful sadness without ever becoming Sgt. Kilbey's Mopey Art Rock Band. the duration keeps the songs so-so in pop shape, but you can feel there's something going on inside, as if the songs sported cracks with something unknown glowing inside. it's got a "uniforme" sound like you can say Heyday is defined by the Heyday sound, Seance by the Seance sound, Forget Yourself by the FY sound. In the end, Uninvited sounded more like a collection than the antarctican Back With Two Beasts. You hear one second of U#23, and you know what to expect - deeply resonating drone, soft-like-silk Takamine 12 strings. And deeply woven into the monolithic sounds, little escapisms, digressions and sideways to lose yourself in. very sparse on the effects side - guitars will be guitars. sometimes they will become sea monsters for a few seconds, but in the end, U#23 is an addendum to the Encyclopedia of Scary-but-Sublime Rock Guitar Timbres otherwise called "Priest=Aura".

I've always had my issues with Tim Powles' über-busy production ideas, another flange here, another electro drum there, yet another vocal filter, constantly getting between me and the music, but the man is restraining himself. Leaving lots of space to breathe. Giving every instrument a sphere of its own, and invisibly connecting them with a seriously sensitive, understated magic touch. Finally, you can hear pure love of sound and the air and silence between the sounds. and to keep U#23 from being lovely only we are granted scary sideways and sudden ambiguous changes of mood. Sunken Sun. Yes, you can see a fiery orange-black sundown before your very ears, just there are some scary-guitar-sounds-on-the-loose (who escaped from the closing part of "Chaos"), reminding you of the horror and size of a sinking sun. Dream pop with balls, if that makes sense. Robin Guthrie is waving from far away, screaming for help in the outbacks...Floating somewhere in the stratocryptodronesphere, but still deeply deeply anchored in the australian desert, or, in case of Happenstance, in the poignant, lovely, vanished veddy Olde English landscapes of Eddie Elgar's "Nimrod". Another impression stubbornly materializing is the ghost of George Harrison in his All-Things-Must-Pass heaven. Harrison is all over the album - Deadman Hands' guitar solo (one of the best they ever had, and it's apparently Tim playing!), that insistent, unstoppable, slowly thumping All Things Must Pass/Isn't it a pity - beat (later perverted by Jeff Lynne)...a propos drumming. TP was always a cymbal man (that's what makes him a jazz drummer sometimes), but here, he's going for hot and steamy thumping tom tom action.

traditional means of a church intro - a storm slowly forming, a shape becoming visible after the sand storm's gone away, parts of a machine joining themselves, some sparse pencil strokes and suddenly a completely unexpected shape/being/world evolving before our very ears. hollow storm blowing through pyramid hallways, a defunct radio going mad, cheesy synth strings evolving into a large sci-fi war epic...sometimes it's music of the most simple shape....a hesitantly plucked fourth in destination, a fauve lava stream on sea line. here, it is a seemingly cheapo midi drum thumping being a seed, but it's growing quickly. seemingly random, a wild ride through the clock of keys is the harmonic base of what is arguably one of the top openers in the church's catalogue. they said goodbye to a main key. starting in c minor, they're tripping through the most distant harmonic relations. sometimes they choose to stay on one chord for a while, this may be a "center", but they're free to leave anytime. just giving a warm shit about harmonic rules and conventions. a main axis isn't established by convention and rules, but by decision. it's almost Schubertian with its constant oscillations between major and minor keys. huge background choirs, and in the end, something unexpectedly mysterious is happening - a small organ lick repeating, indescribably sad and lost, straddling joy and deathly fear, some few shivering notes masterfully painted into the picture.

deadman's hands is the kind of song making you wonder why they ever condescended to record something like Easy, which in hindsight seems like a parody on Metropolis and Another Earth (it was dropped from the setlists mid-tour, remember...). it's a kind of more visceral Chromium, and a parallel universe version of Ricochet (as if they would have found the logical conclusions of that great beginning) - trademark one note chanting, 12 string guitar... all happening in the darkest darkness, hailstorms and rain. greg dulli would be envious - they're outguttertwinning the gutter twins here. immediate comfort in the cloud-hopping, golden, jangling Pangaea heaven. doesn't the contrast of "oh yeah, awlright" and "pangaea" maky you smile? it's like "1-2-3-4 hey ho, let's go to Lemuria"...Happenstance...place a minor chord after another minor chord, and the reviewer's kneejerk reaction will always be "european". the solo is the essence of peter koppes. i don't know, it must be him. slide guitar with e-bow. he is the brian eno of rock guitar...because there is something going on within the sound...it's vibrating, a very slight random phasing...or whatever there is in professor koppes' guitar wizardry box. a huge sound incorporating a hundred textures. Fantastic vocals by Marty Willson-Piper...it's like an afterthought to JF's Angela Carter...

On Angel Street - a scary counterpart to Afterimage...piano/organ and Marty's acoustic guitar meeting again, this time not in the drugged hangover of Magician, but on a barren planet far far away...this is one of their most frightening songs on this side of could be anyone...Could be Anyone transports the immediate horror of a Lynch movie, while Angel Street goes for the subliminal and worse horror...because you just don't know what's actually taking you away...and no, that lovely spanish guitar only adds to the fear...would you try candy made on Solaris?

There is Lunar, with its disturbing-while-sad-and-lovely flute intro...and yes, it's got three chords and the truth...though a very hopeless, desperate truth, with Kilbey's voice always on the verge of breaking (anyone spotted the quotation of some Earthed music?). no verse, no chorus, just a growing mantra...and then the song starts revolting against itself, ends with the flute again, as if the last breath would leave whomever... Space Saviour might be my last favourite song of the selection, but the hundred voices Kilbey's displaying here make it still great. Just imagine that rasputinous guitarist fervently banging the cymbals on this one. It's a not so distant relative of My Little Problem, crescendo- and simplicity-wise, but it's painted with dark bright colours...fiery red, orange, coarse green and black brush strokes...

Operetta...you know i guess this is the best song they made in this century. when i first listened to operetta, i just fell from the earth. i became a silent observer of what was happening....grass growing, the galaxy orbiting, volcanoes erupting, little animals searching for shelter under their parents wings/paws...babies being born, a ladybug crawling on a leaf of grass, stars exploding on the other side of the universe. everything small and huge, microcosmos and macrocosmos suddenly uniting, blinding me by their anguishingly beautiful magnificence....hey, when did you have your last epiphany listening to pop music...and i don't do drugs! this song makes you feel fucking tiny. it's got that serene beauty of "moon and the sea", reinterpreted as a daylight piece (the australian stoner greatgrandchild of the Penny Lane trumpet comes over for a rendezvous). this is religious music, friends! SK indulging in lovely visions, Powles tribally thundering on the toms, pearly piano, Marty bassline circling like a thousand years of seasons, Koppes waving the wand, creating little exploding stars...

this is what you will find in this record - simple, lapidary things like caress and consolation. for a couple of minutes, you will be remembered of the time you were a child. when the world was a scary, vast but infinitely exciting and adventurous place. thus somehow, Untitled#23 is The Church's Ingmar Bergman album...it's got the cracks and edges of a late work, it's expansive, stubbornly on its own, while being incredibly lovely and tender. in your head, the album's duration is much more than one hour. if you dig it, it will be with you forever.

...because strange is what we need


The Fandorin Foto Files
Last Edited By: fandorin Apr 16 09 1:04 PM. Edited 1 times.