Jasper TX – The Black Sun Transmissions (Fang Bomb)

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Jasper TX – The Black Sun Transmissions (Fang Bomb)

The storm front drives towards the coast, surging forth on the confluence of the invisible isobars, straining at the very fabric of existence. The seas preceding the front are glowering and menace the few small craft (fool) hardy enough to head out with such fierce weather brewing in the west. Static and black noise drowns out the sound of the oceans ripping against the hull of the fishing boat – silence descends as the craft bobs helplessly in the trough between the swells, losing steerageway under the sheer weight of the approaching crest. ‘Signals Through Wood and Dust’s are somehow transmitted miraculously from the sputtering radio, which had been previously submerged when a cruel green sea rolled over the foredeck of the craft, shattering a plexiglass window in the wheelhouse. Is there any hope of salvation? ‘The Weight of Days’ bears down on the crew; will they make it back to harbour? Shall the bilge pump withstand the workload that it is currently being called on to do? How will the family survive if we don’t make it? Questions both profound and prosaic filter through the overworked synapses of the crew as the small craft battles valiantly into the teeth of the gale.

As the front passes over the coast, dumping its fury on the surrounding low, scrubby hills, the swells moderate. The crew scarcely breathe a sigh of relief, as there is too much work to be done in the aftermath of the tempest. The youngest crewmember, only recently acquainted with the inviolate mysteries of the sea, assesses the staunch performance of the ship’s captain. On shore the cap’n seemed out of his depth away from the slip yards and dry docks, but out here on the open ocean, the deckhand, in a moment of youthful insecurity, sees in the captain ‘All I Could Never Be’. To remember the benign ‘Shores’ of the outward journey, when the approaching front was nothing more than a chimera predicted by a satellite orbiting the earth, now that time seems to belong to another epoch. An epoch when a heat haze rose off the flat lands and limestone coast of the soon-to-be lee shore; aboard ship the crew feel soporific as they depart the boat harbour, preferring the hazy remembrances of the night before to the harsh reality of the trip just beginning. Back in the present, the swells ameliorate further and the fury of the storm disperses; the helm is swung around and the bow traces an arc back towards the coast. After the storms fury, sea birds appear behind the trawler once again, drawn by the movement and colour on the open ocean (and the aromas of the days’ catch). These ‘White Birds’ weave an invisible web of transecting lines around the craft, guiding the weary mariners back to port to the refrain of a muted piano, a rusty trombone and a delicate atmosphere heavy with redemption and reignited hope.

This is Dag Rosenqvist’s ninth album as Jasper TX since 2005, and it conjures up the above schoolroom literary images in my head as I surrender to the inexorable gravity of his The Back Sun Transmissions. For aficionados of Tim Hecker, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Machinefabriek and Ben Frost – let your mind drift unshackled whilst exploring the multiple moods of an exquisite imaginary soundtrack/post-post-post-rock/dark ambient/Scandinavian electroacoustic melancholia imagined out of the bowels of your own favourite melodrama.

Oliver Laing

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Music Obsessive / DJ / Reviewer - I've been on the path of the obsessive ear since forever! Currently based in Perth, you can check out some radio shows I host at http://www.rtrfm.com.au/presenters/Oliver%20Laing

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