Articles
2008 Ten Favourite Labels
Ten Questions Celer
Ten Questions Deadbeat

Albums
Anzio Green
Ariel Abshire
Osman Arabi
Arastoo & AEMAE
Asymmetrical Head
Benoît Pioulard
Bohren & der Club of Gore
Matt Borghi
Celer
Cubenx
Anders Dahl
Davis & Roux
Deadbeat
Feu Follet
Formication
Generic
Stefan Goldmann
Gultskra Artikler / Lanterns
Hauschka
Hexes & Ohs
Koen Holtkamp
I Am Robot And Proud
Illusion of Safety
Integral
Koen Park
Akira Kosemura
Koushik
Library Tapes
Lineland
Mamiffer
Melodium
Moon
Oppressed By The Line
Pillars and Tongues
Rumpistol
Kamran Sadeghi
Sans Serif
Signal Deluxe
Skogen
Saul Stokes
Matthew Sweet
Tapage
Thursday / Envy
Windy & Carl

Compilations / Mixes
An Taobh Tuathail II
Chaos Restored 2
DFPRMX
Kuniyuki
Message Subatomic World
Pero es olor en el cuarto...

EPs
Canyons!
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Cubenx
Dokuro
Fraction
Lee Holman
Ikonika
King Midas Sound
Michael Lambright
Library Tapes
Lilienweiss
MRK1
:papercutz
Spencer Parker
Poratz
Spartak + John Chantler
Andy Vaz

Thursday / Envy: Split
Temporary Residence

Kindred spirits Thursday (vocalist Geoff Rickly, guitarists Tom Keeley and Steve Pedulla, keyboardist Andrew Everding, bassist Tim Payne, drummer Tucker Rule) and Envy (Tetsuya Fukagawa, Nobukata Kawai, Masahiro Tobita, Manabu Nakagawa, Dairoku Seki) tear through seven tracks on this thirty-four-minute split disc.

Rickly's vocals roar over the band's hyperventilated riffology in the frenetic opener “As He Climbed the Dark Mountain” and even more fiery “An Absurd and Unrealistic Dream of Peace” (it's amazing that his singing can be heard over the sonic maelstrom produced by the band). The instrumental cuts “In Silence” and “Appeared and Was Gone” (the latter a remix of the former by Mercury Rev's Anthony Molina) are anything but secondary. The crushing “In Silence” roars like some grandiose fireball shooting from a black hole though a quieter piano interlude at the song's center offers momentary relief from the seething tumult. Molina's version initially brings forth the group's melancholic side before letting it rip the roof off during the second half. A subdued end to the song provides a perfect segue into Envy's “An Umbrella Fallen Into Fiction” which proves Envy's eminently capable of playing with refinement and taste when it wants to. The song's delicate guitar lines and whispered vocals give way, however, to the group's trademark wail and Tetsuya Fukagawa's familiar bark in the closing minutes. “Isolation of a Light Source” is very much in the Envy tradition, so to speak, with the band stoking hellacious fire while the closing “Pure Birth and Loneliness” offers a more nuanced portrait in its move from restrained dramatics to slow-burning euphoria. Listeners with an appetite for “thoughtful face-melters” (as the promo text states) may need to strap themselves in during this intense ride.

November 2008