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Set Fire To Flames | SingsReign Rebuilder

A GYBE split-off, and almost just as good.
CD, 130701/PIAS

Tekst: Bas Ickenroth

Publicatiedatum: 22 oktober 2001

Set Fire To Flames is a collective consisting of 13 people from the musical community of Montreal, with five members of Godspeed (Sophie is present in both Mt. Zion and Set Fire To Flames). For this album, they locked themselves up in a small building (to see which effect the tension and deprivation had on the outcome) and recorded for five days. It resulted in more than twelve hours of music, and they compiled it into these 75 minutes. From this music, 60 procent is improvised and 40 procent is composed. So much for the statistics, on to the music. As you can imagine with more than half of Godspeed in the collective, the sound is dark, spacious, and desolate, just like Godspeed themselves. In fact, if there's one album 'Sings Reign Rebuilder' could be compared with it's Godspeed's 'F#A#(infinity)', their critically acclaimed debut album. Set Fire To Flames even quote a piece of that very album on 'Fading Lights are Fading', a beautiful violin part. Big difference on this album is the way they put the pieces of music together: Instead of creating long suites, they divided them into 15 seperate parts. But it would be a mistake to listen to the songs randomly, because doing so makes you lose the necessary cohesion between the pieces. And that cohesion is nessecary because it's easy to dismiss the pieces as "unfinished" or "sketches". Well, some pieces are indeed unfinished sketches, and those would have been better if they had been given the attention they deserved, but for the most part the album delivers superbly. And especially the more composed parts are incredible - the improvised parts fail to reach the level of Shalabi Effect or Boxhead Ensemble by a mere inch. Those composed parts sound just like Godspeed, plain and simple, with the same sort of tension and build-up, but without the release and discharge. 'Shit-Heap-Gloria of the New Town Planning' is the best example (and best song for that matter). Especially when combined with field recordings, speaches, and dark drones, one could easily mistake this album for Godspeed's first. Superlatives? I could use countless superlatives to describe this music, the state of bliss I'm in when listening to it, etc., etc., but it would do more harm than good. If you're longing for the new Godspeed album, this is the one to buy. It'll make the waiting much easier.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/set-fire-to-flames/singsreign-rebuilder/1061/
Meer Set Fire To Flames op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/set-fire-to-flames