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ALKALYS  Choeur Delys  CD   (Basement Apes)   11.98


Choeur Delys is a new album from the French quartet Alkalys that just came out recently on Basement Apes. Don't know much about this band due to my lack of French, most of the band's website/myspace is in French and there isn't much information on them out on the web, I'm not even sure if this is their first album or not (though I'm pretty sure that it is). COming from Basement Apes, it's no surprise that their music is pretty mathy, but they combine a bunch of other interesting elements along with math rock for their sound. The seven songs on Choeur Delys mix together bits of sunny folk melody and lush guitar ambience, treated guitar strings that are scraped and bowed to create layers of textured sound, strange found-sound samples and hypnotic drones are built upon a heavy foundation of bass riffs and thunderous, complex drumming. Very proggy, very epic, I hear bits of Sonic Youth and King Crimson and Explosions In The Sky and early 90's math rock all tied up in the Alkalys sound, and those weird samples (what are those? street sounds? wildlife noises? it's impossible to tell) that float over the instrumental music throw this slightly off-kilter, giving their heavy, wall-of-guitar epics an offbeat, surreal vibe. Sometimes the guitars are woven into such thick curtains of sound that Alkalys even evoke the guitar-symphonies of Branca or Chatham. The drumming stands out, too, as it moves from busy jazz-informed flourishes and intricate patterns to bludgeoning slow-mo power. Then there's the dual bass attack - yeah, two bass guitars, but it's not as heavy as having two bassists might suggest; instead, they weave their instruments around each other in complex melodic riffs that serve as the foundation for the guitars to ascend from. Like a way proggier Explosions In The Sky with a tendency to erupt into the occasional burst of metallic heaviness, and splattered with weird random field recorded noises and samples. Comes in a four-panel digipack with cool artwork.


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