Recant- Gesture

Artist: Recant
CD Title: Gesture
Label: Immanence Records
Reviewer: Matthew Johnson
Date: 7/22/04

Make no mistake. Recant’s latest release on Immanence may be noisy, and it may be powerful, but this is no power noise record. You’ll never hear these tracks in the clubs. Think instead of Boyd Rice at his most sonically confrontational, or even Converter’s Scott Sturgis if he abandoned all pretense of making music for dancing to. Starting off with the eerie whispers of “Under the Sycamore Trees,” Gesture then launches into a wall of sped-up, distorted beats and crunches on “Internal” and “Gandharvas.” Though the band does in fact use synthetic beats as well as more ambient textures, there are none of the usual rhythms here. Instead, the beats are so distorted and the tempo so compressed that all that can be discerned is a pummeling wall of sound. At other times, as on the more atmospheric tracks like “Severance” and “Torment,” the beats are stretched out and echoing through a fog of ambient sound and distortion. Fuzz and static thicken the noisy blend on “Puzzle Box,” which despite being creepy and atmospheric is nonetheless almost painfully dense, while “Latch” creates a rhythm of sorts completely out of distortion effects. It’s the little flourishes that keep this interesting, though: the pianos and hints of melody floating out of the cacophony and sheer randomness of “Exhibit 1, 2 and 3.” These flickering moments of coherence, rather than the intentional weirdness, are what make this album such a rewarding listen.

For more information on Recant, check out their website at http://recant.cjb.net.