MERDARAHTA - breathe electric
2013
Indie
"Noise collective" is the best tag I come up with when I think of Merdarahta. It is experimental, atmospheric, it has a certain 'live' quality (even on its recordings), and its personality is plural.
This collective comes from the greater Ottawa / Gatineau, or National Capital Region. Here we find a fine selection of musicians known for their exploration of music, sounds, recording techniques, etc. It includes members of The Sun Through a Telescope, Fuck the Facts and Black Oak Decline, among others. Despite the common aggressive roots of these other entities, Merdarahta comes as a fresh, distinct, and relatively unrelated project. It is the playing field where musicians bring as many pedals as they can, where they build thick walls of textures (in opposition to focussing on riffs or moments), and where they can loop ideas without end. Live, it is more of a transcendental exercise: the creation of layers emanates on stage from single musicians and it is being experienced as a silent communion by the audience. In other words, for many reasons this music is elsewhere... it is reversed.
Breathe Electric is the third album, or compilation of ideas from Merdarahta. I say 'ideas', since the collective seems to be working on series of common textures at a time (exploration sessions?), and the result is expressed through serial song titles: "Snake Charmer I-IV", "Towers I-III", "Fault of Air I-III", ... The latest album starts with "Breathe II", a 5:19-minute construction that follows the footsteps of "Breathe" (the first track on the previous compilation). It is high on oxygen, with delicate guitar textures floating here and there, and a light atmosphere suited for an opening track.
Like the different phases of sleep, Breathe Electric quickly switches to something deeper and darker. The "Electric" series (I-VI) is a different beast than "Breathe", or even "Fault of Air". While the latter could have been some kind of cosmic exploration devoided of light and darkness, "Electric" is a passage to a darker tone.
Atmospheric music like Merdarahta could be compared to the process of sleeping, dreaming, or even thinking: it is formless and very abstract from the structural point of view, while staying connected to a distant musical idea.
"Electric" seems to bear a hidden thought the background; something that passes behind our eyes as we listen to the music. While "Breathe" is like the doorstep of the unconscious mind and mixes dream and reality like coffee and milk, "Electric" becomes the dissolution of reality, like a shutter closing our eyes and dragging us further away into the subconscious. Static textures and droning sounds are the powerful magnets found on the numbered tracks of "Electric". Like restless sleep, these channels are textured by stress. Repetitive distorted bass, for example on "Electric III", is laid on an immobile fog of distant noise, while other instrumental presences are appearing and disappearing around us. Everywhere throughout "Electric", when vocals appear, they are tortured and positioned in the distance like fragments of thought lost in a dream.
This music doesn't provide any sense of time: we can hardly say if we're in the beginning, middle or end of a song, as there's a strong impression of immobilism. I however find a certain logic in the slow procession of tracks--i.e. levels of intensity.
The collective and live quality of Merdarahta can be heard in the instrumentation. While I wouldn't try making a list of the instruments or the effects they use, I can easily recognize the drums, guitars, bass and vocals. Merdarahta is eons away from the computer generated /synth effects / one man band. This singular characteristic makes it rich and intricate.
Next time you feel like leaving this earthly plane of existence, get your tickets here:
http://merdarahta.bandcamp.com/album/breathe-electric
