JARBOE / JUSTIN K. BROADRICK - J2

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: The End Records TE096

Release Year: 2008

Note: exciting collab-album of the ex SWANS and the JESU / GODFLESH mastermind !!

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €13.00

More Info

"Jarboe (SWANS) & Justin Broadrick (JESU, GODFLESH) team up again for this 6 song EP which can be considered the entry into the forthcoming larger denser work, which is an exploration into total sound over the parameters of traditional sound structure." [label info]

"Apparently this album hit the Billboard "New Age" charts! Not sure how or why, you wouldn't think that a collaboration between one of the Swans and a member of Godflesh would qualify as New Age (and it really isn't!). Downtempo electronica with some avant-garde elements, more like, with hints of doomic menace. If you're looking for the crushing metallic guitars of Godflesh, you won't quite find them, though many passages are deep and dark and spooky enough to remind us of Broadrick's current project Jesu.
The deal with this perhaps inevitable collaboration (inevitable given Broadrick's obvious Swans fandom, and Jarboe's openness to collaborative ventures, witness her earlier disc with Neurosis), is that it's JB making mostly electronic backgrounds for Jarboe to do her thing vocally... operatic excesses, and mewlings and moanings... so obviously you've got to be into "her thing". Some are, some aren't. The ambient, layered and looped wailings of the opener, "Decay", should separate the two camps pretty clearly. Some will find Jarboe's vocals to be full of mystery and emotion, others, simply irritating (though it's only on "Tribal Limo" that we really got annoyed with her, the track featuring weird Diamanda Galas yodelling over junky Gang Gang Dance-ish beats). That said, for those into Jarboe, there's a lot to like here.
And we can kind of see how, New Age or not, this could crack the charts on the strength some of the better cuts, like "Let Go" which
sounds a lot like Portishead or Bjork, Jarboe effecting a babygirl voice under a blanket of crackley drone, accompanied by a spare snare thwack..."[Aquarius Rec]

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