The name Talvihorros is not the only Greek-sounding element at work in Londoner Ben Chatwin’s Music in Four Movements. Talvihorros is primarily a guitar project, exploring the range of notes and noises that can be coaxed from the instrument, but the plucked riff on the opening ‘Thoughts of Violence’ twangs distinctly like a bouzouki. This folksiness doesn’t last, and is soon subsumed by the portentous feedback growl Chatwin does best, but the balance of clean tones with smeared grit is a recurrent feature on …Four Movements, and an attractive one.
Similarly, both the maudlin track titles and the maudlin slow moving development of these long-form pieces recalls seminal Canadian post-rock depressives Godspeed You Black Emperor, as performed by one-man-band. The scene is set with lonesome, almost Western guitar figures, before feedback, organ and random percussive rattle sweep in like clouds of acrid smoke. Part I of ‘A Continual Echo of the Sound of Loss’ builds from indistinct industrial din into a thick tonal grey blur; Part II applies the bouzouki-like tones but leans heavier on sustained organ and feedback chords. The sparse play of notes against wind-howl feedback of ‘…And Then They Walked Into The Sea’ offers a resigned conclusion to the suite, hopeless even. Hardly surprising then is Chatwin’s inspiration for the album – ‘a journey of the final days of someone who has chosen to end everything.’ It’s a fitting end to a convincing and at times beautiful study of despair.
Joshua Meggitt
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