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Big Brave - Au De La

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    Ian Jane
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  • Big Brave - Au De La



    Big Brave - Au De La
    Released by: Southern Lord
    Released on: September 18th, 2015.
    Purchase From Amazon

    Montreal based Big Brave let loose their second full length album and their first for new record label home Southern Lord with Au De La. Made up of Robin Wattie on guitar and vocals, Mathieu Ball on guitar and Louis-Alexandre on drums the band has a much wider, heavier and fuller sound than you might expect from a three piece. This time out the trio works with producer Efrim Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and incorporate some of Silver Mt. Zion's string player Jessica Moss's violin work into some of their music.

    The album starts off with On The By And By And Thereon, a five minute track that starts off with one riff more or less repeated while the vocals get increasingly more bizarre and hyped up. Cue some unexpected silence, then start over again, but this time get bigger, a little angrier. Then at the four minute mark the band just goes off into a wall of sound… then more silence, then drums over silence… This is like Jesus Lizard meets Bjork with a bunch of Sleep mixed in and it's pretty wild.

    The second track is called Look At How The World Has Made A Change and it's just over twelve minutes long. It starts off calm, a little bit of drone and noise building a layer on top of which the vocals climb. There's restraint here though, and you can tell as the cymbals wail subtly in the background that something is going to happen, something big. It builds slowly though, and it's not until you're eight minutes in that the repetition starts to break. The drums follow less of a pattern, the guitars start to collide rather than play together and Wattie's vocals go up and up and up and then start to break in interesting ways.




    Track three is called do.no.harm.do.no.wrong.Do.No.Harm.Do.No.Wrong.DO.N O.HARM.DO.NO.WRONG and I have no idea why it's written out like that but it is. It's just over six minutes long (these guys don't seem to do short songs) and it's instantly more aggressive than the first two tracks. The guitars are concerned less with riffs than with feedback and noise while the drums pound rhythmically to anchor the ensuing craziness that plays out here.

    And As The Waters Go spends just over ten minutes getting under your skin. Wattie's vocals are the basis of the first part, she sings while a single guitar hits a single chord and a droning sound that is some sort of super intense feedback builds behind it all. At the four minute mark things explode, but only for a second, as then they pull back and that chord plays again before another explosion. This one is all over the place, with that chord really the only consistent element of a song that deftly bridges the gap between noise, drone, stoner and industrial elements in a manner that works surprisingly well.

    Last but not least, the band finishes off with (re)Collection Part II, a thirteen minute epic that starts off with a loud hum and some random feedback over it - other noises work their way into this too, and the vocals start up as everything sort of swirls in the darkness around it. There's a riff here, they hit it over and over again, but it's what happens outside of the constant hitting of that riff that gives this track its energy. It feels like it's going to end around the five minute mark but it just takes a breather, feedback provides the basis of a solid minute or two of noise and the vocals? It's not Wattie this time but one of the guys in the band, giving this a very different feel until her sweeter, more erratic voice joins with this angrier, raspier singing for one of the strangest harmonies you'll ever hear. And then, as the track and in turn the album come to a close, things get quiet… leaving you with a feeling best described as uneasy, but completely satisfied.

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