Exhaust — Enregistreur

Constellation Records is one of the most consistently impressive labels around. Whether it’s with grand releases such as Godspeed You Black Emperor!’s latest or with intimate affairs such as Frankie Sparo’s live EP, a certain intangible quality has always been present.

Exhaust is a bass, drum & tape trio (with some bass clarinet making an appearance sporadically thanks to bassist Gordon) and Enregistreur is their first release since their 1998 self-titled album (released on vinyl and 2 years later on CD). The press release states that it is a “downtempo album of concrete/punk experimentation that gestures towards various currents in contemporary electronic music”. I think that’s a fair general description, but it should also be noted that Exhaust’s music is quite ominous and dark. The bass seems to be played using a volume pedal to eliminate most of the note attack; this, combined with the brooding, cello-like playing and the quantity of “organic” electronic noises and tape manipulations gives the album a paranoid, almost claustrophobic aura.

As good as this all sound on paper and as excellent as those musicians are, the actual music didn’t quite affect me as much as I had first hoped. I admit that it did suffer the comparison with the new Hangedup (from the same label, a mind-blowing disc – But that’s another review) and it had to fight for its place in my playlist against many other recent albums, but even on its own I feel that there’s a little something missing. It does succeed on the ambience level – this could be the soundtrack to a very depraved movie – but the really good moments (such as the the 4:00 break in Voiceboxed) are too few and far in between and many tracks take quite a while to get going: this makes active listening a little tedious.

I’ll put this album in my “late night ambience” pile.