Since 2006, Spartak has been a symbol of Australia’ tendency toward genre intersections – fusing the far-off areas of punk dynamics and sound design-focused experimental improv. It’s unsurprising that Verona reinvents the way Spartak approach this intersection; in the live setting, guitarist Shoeb Ahmad and drummer Evan Dorrian spent increasingly greater time away from their native instruments, on laptops.
The recording of Verona was a short, intense period of improvisation over two days. As usual, it’s the subsequent two months of sculpting that are vital to why Verona is or isn’ worth considering. It’s established that Spartak are slick improvisors – Dorrian’ skittering free drumming is barely comparable, and Ahmad’ new tricks seem endless. The meat, the material for a well-executed album is in this, but it’s their graduation, and re-establishment of their approaches that make Verona special.
Where Tales from the Colony Room primarily surrounded the guitar-drums-processing interplay, Verona is focused around utilising a wider range of sound sources, to a point where the liner notes clearly state which instruments are played by who in each track.
Beginning with resonant, unprocessed prepared guitar improvisation “Morning Prayerâ€, Verona unfolds outwards, gradually gaining intensity, evolving into textural relationships that always seem in flux. “The Waves To The Railsâ€, track 2, on its own demonstrates this process over 9 minutes, beginning with sounds from “Morning Prayer†looped, gradually joined and eventually dominated by processed drums and newer ideas in the guitar.
While on the surface, these first two tracks seem to on their own form their own cell, their role in the shape of the overall album is integral as a bouncing off point for the album’ arc. The initial sunny, almost folky sonority is destroyed and continually deconstructed toward the middle of the album, towards the heavily filtered junk percussion of middle track “Pulled By Ropeâ€. This mirrors the trajectory of decay in debut Tales from the Colony Room, though on Verona, Spartak effects processes of change right down to the instruments used.
The second half of the album rebuilds itself from the disintegrated mood of “Pulled By Ropeâ€, and, by contrast, is identified by analogue processing and lo-fi tape vocals. In this way, Verona completes something of an arc, though rather than completing a full circle, returns with new colours. Like Tales from the Colony Room, Verona‘ strength comes from its ability to construct an album-long gesture. But rather than slinking into whichever roles seem appropriate, the medium – the source material becomes almost as much of a deciding factor in the resultant sound.
It’s feat enough that on Verona, Spartak manage to resemble themselves for the diversity of sounds on the album – but the crux of Verona goes beyond its fragmented character acrobatics. Verona works a cohesive aural narrative that contextualises everything within. You can’ help but lose yourself in its impetus.
Marcus Whale
