David is an EP of music connected by a stark theme: loss. It wasn’t intended that way, but both via subject matter and collaboration, some of the people central to it are no longer with us, and this then is a sonic tribute to them.
It is also a collection of music that goes beyond what many people would recognize as perhaps songs in the traditional sense, pushing beyond even the already extreme sounds of shoegaze and alt-rock, noise-pop and music-as-art to see what lies beyond. This is music made on uncharted sonic waters.
The title track, a tribute to a dear departed cousin, opens in a visceral sound space that slowly coalesces into something more structured, often sounding like a song coming in through a poorly tuned radio, the melody ebbing and flowing in and out of earshot, alternately supported and subsummed by harsher sounds.
“I Can’t Hear” is calmer yet often just as conflicted, confusing even, the vocals echoing out across a chiming, fractured soundscape, twin musical soundscapes juxtaposed, sonic worlds within sonic worlds.
“Run – Live,” with the drumming of Rob James, another who is sadly lost to us, gives us a chance to see how this sound translates to the live environment, and the EP rounds off with the remix of “David,” now a glitchy, staccato electronic affair, tauter, less chaotic but no less creatively challenging, the sound of a song edited in vertical bands rather than playing with the more usual horizonally laid tracking.
Not only a tribute to two people close to the artists heart, this collection of songs brings up that question of where song ends and noise starts, where music meets art and reminds us that whilst the three minute pop song is most peoples idea of the perfect form, it is those who push boundaries, merge, mix and manipulate and even mangle, and who truly challange form and convention who are really keeping music moving forward.
Mazmere is one such artist.
Facebook
Bandcamp
YouTube
Instagram
Spotify
