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CD Feature/ Fear Falls Burning: "He spoke in dead tongues"

  Tobias

When „First by a whisper, then by a storm“, Fear Falls Burning’s first sign of life, was released early this year, it seemed like the perfect companion to a slowly dying autumn and a carefully budding summer. Dewdrops were glistening at the top of the forests’ leaves and tender sounds swirled through the air like the echo of a wonderful, yet long-forgotten time. Now “He spoke in dead tongues” is released, it seems like the perfect companion to a bitter and frosty winter.

This may sound strange at first, because nothing much has changed on the surface of things. Dirk Serries still has his electric guitars plugged straight into his amplifier, swimming in the tide of the moment and recording his pieces live and without the use of any overdubs. It is the same purity that made “First by a whisper, then by a storm” such an essential record and the zen-induced result of a harsh method of musical effacement: Lonely tones drift through harmoniously singing clouds of reverb, black streams of crunching distortion flow underneath heavenly harmonics, minuscule melodies appear and drift off and everything seems to ask the question: How long can you repeat this one chord, this one tone, this one motive, before the music collapses? Most astoundingly, it never does and instead keeps the listener’s attention even through the two epic, more than half hour long aural seas that form the heart of the individual CDs of this double-disc set. Even more surprisingly, despite the use of the very same tools, Serries has managed to make “He spoke in dead tongues” an entirely different album from its predecessor – drifting more unconsciously and with a sensual mood of floating eroticism, these delicately woven compositions of shifting emphases never cease to captivate your imagination.

It’s the same as in meditation: Just when you think you’re wasting your time, there’s a moment of total clarity. Over two hours long, this is both a fantastic field for discovery as well as a tremendous challenge. As Fear Falls Burning prepares for another tour and a busy 2006, one can only wonder as to what will come next. What started as a whisper has indeed turned into a veritable storm.

Homepage: Fear Falls Burning
Homepage: Ikon / Projekt Records