So I finally did it folks – I bought a cassette tape. Via mail order, for £8.50 including postage. I don’t even have a decent tape player at the time of writing, but such was my desire to hear David Terry’s ‘Sorrow’ through the big speakers after streaming it online, I had to go the physical option, perhaps finally prompting me to start scouring local ‘Collection Only’ ebay listing in search of a double tape deck. (THINKS OUT LOUD: Then I could finally listen to those Indian classical tapes I rescued from a bin too…)

Anyway - with that out of way, banish the preceding paragraph from your brain, for such nattering crap is, it’s safe to say, complete anathema to the atmosphere of earthless, transcendental Romanticism David Terry seeks to evoke herein.

If you’ve been reading these pages for a while, you’ll be aware of Terry’s work providing bass and ‘incantations’ for Bong, and you’ll be aware that I speak as someone with a deep love for everything that band have ever achieved when I dare to suggest that some of Terry’s contributions in the latter capacity have occasionally bordered on the brink of the ridiculous, thus making me at least *slightly* wary when approaching material he’s knocked up on his own, without any bandmates to rein him in.

Well, I needn’t have worried. On ‘Sorrow’, Terry throws the net of his ambition wide, and… I dunno, comes back with all the fucking fish I suppose, if you’ll excuse the iffy metaphor. Whether taken as a work of modern composition, of “dungeon drone” (quoth the bandcamp page), or merely as long form gothic melancholia, this is a very impressive achievement, and makes for heady, immersive listening, even across a near ninety minute run time.

Whilst Terry retains the meditative / hypnotic feel of Bong herein, any trace of metal/doom ancestry is long gone. Instead, other comparisons abound. Admittedly, ‘.My Friends, You Are Shining Pillars Of Light’ sounds very much of a piece with ‘Find Your Own Gods’ from Bong’s most recent LP (or, failing that, sort of like Terry Riley communing with the spirit of Blake on some sun-dappled English hillside, if you must), but ‘Slowly, Slowly, Up Into The Rain We Fell’ sounds equally like The Necks attempting to ‘jam’ with a Gregorian choral ensemble, whilst the legitimately epic ambience of ‘Crummock Water’ might be said to resemble Brian Eno’s hypothetical “Music for Cliff-top Church Yards”, whilst also recalling the sombre-yet-calming tones of Leyland Kirby, or Rameses III’s ‘I Could Not Love You More’.

But, such one-sheet guff is both unnecessary and inane. In truth, I’m aware of nothing in the current micro-label/sub-rock underground that shares the compositional scope and clarity of vision Terry displays here.

Conjured up primarily from voice, keys, Fursaxa-esque accordion drones and a touch of distant, thumping percussion to keep time, there is a carefully wrought sense of slow mo melodicism to these pieces that set them apart from the vast majority of Terry’s lonesome tape droning contemporaries. The layers he builds come together with a more deliberate intent than the kind of accidental / circumstantial methodology that often governs such things, sometimes sounding like the moment of sublime tonal union when everything comes together in some grand classical piece, stretched out and extended across a 20+ minute duration. It’s pretty great.

Wisely perhaps in this more subdued context, Terry’s use of his voice here avoids the somewhat theatrical bent of his thunderous interventions on Bong records, instead employing a ‘voice as instrument’ approach that sees his beautifully resonant bass tones drifting mantra like through the fog of ‘My Friends..’, repeating variations on the title sentence to ultimately moving effect.

Emotionally-speaking, ‘Sorrow’ belies the expectations of its title and cover art by neatly side-stepping the over-bearing affectations of woe and world-denying misanthropy that ensnare so many metal bands, instead evoking a more honest, more hopeful field of melancholic drift, suggestive of a deep immersion both in the contemplation of nature, and in the gleaming spires of the distinctly old school, capital ‘R’ Romanticism that often goes with it.

Far from the blackened deep space explorations of Bong’s earlier career, the feel Terry conveys here recalls the band’s inspired use of Turner’s ‘Thompson’s Aeolian Harp’ on the cover of their We Are, We Were and We Will Have Been LP from 2015, and – for me at least – it is a very good feel to find oneself on the receiving end of.

I know that format isn’t everything, but I also know that, each time I enter a new release record shop for the remainder of this year and see the racks stocked with the shiny new efforts of fly-by-night trending indie bands, their ugly, photo-they-pulled-off-instagram cover art lovingly rendered in eye-damaging HD colour, ready to sit like a badge of pride by the skirting-board for a few weeks whilst their new owner streams their efforts on Spotify – then verily I will weep for my inability to listen to David Terry’s ‘Sorrow’ via the suitably luxurious double LP onto which this incredible music richly deserves to be pressed.

Oh well – at least I’ll have a tape.

---

You can have one too if you visit Opal Tapes here.

Labels: album reviews, David Terry