Does Australia have more experimental musicians per capita than anywhere else in the world? With labels like Preservation, helloSquare, and Room40 cranking out the hits from an alternate universe, it certainly could be argued, perhaps even properly researched. It was only a matter of time before the well-established ambient act Spartak drank the Kool-Aid in the room and headed off into uncharted waters. Based on the results of the band's new album, it is truly a natural progression.
Spartak's debut, Tales From The Colony Room, hinted at a looser approach. It was a slow-burning, experimental ambient megascape, mixed impeccably and toiled over for months. Conversely, Verona has a shrug-worthy album cover depicting a distant nowhere road and was recorded in just two days. To call the recordings "free form" would be a bit of an understatement, yet the level of cohesiveness throughout the tracks is commendable. Shoeb Ahmad used a no-input mixing board, manipulated a four-track, and processed the lot with various guitar pedals, while experimental drummer Evan Dorrian painted the landscape with percussive fingerpaints and field recordings of crickets and conversations. These players aren't droning; they are mental landscaping.
The first moments of Verona act a bit like an experimental warm up, sounding like Skyphone and Joanna Newsom getting loose on their respective stringed toys. Things expand into a chorus of pluckery and percussion on "The Waves To The Rails." Despite a plethora of sounds, the piece feels like a competent narrative of an alien airport, or more like the lament of an insect that has been torched by a bug zapper but not terminated, doomed to lie in the moat below and listen to its brethren crawl and fly around, occasionally meeting their own accidental electrocutions. Despite this oddly brutal depiction, the piece is very calm, sparkling on the edges, and frayed but stitched together soundly.
The production treatments on "Tweezer" make it sound like drum sticks are slowly tumbling down the rabbit hole. The tumbling work on the kit might as well have been played by a wind elemental. A repetitive guitar motif begins to wear on the vital humors a bit as it approaches six minutes, so the piece is a bit of a mixed bag. "Pulled By Rope" has a similar sound, but more like it took place in an empty community center room with nothing but chairs to make sounds telekinetically. Texturally, it's interesting, but its mildly bloated length doesn't afford it as great an impact as it could.
The real gems come in the second half, and these songs are further testament to how well this duo communicates musically. "Sleepstalker" is a haunted piece, laced with a shimmery guitar line and drenched with distant operatic howls, marred by affected wind. It swells to a cavernous size, enveloping the listener in its almost ritualistic conjurations. A portal will open in the room with the audience The grand finale, "Second Half Clouded," also features female vocals, these being sweeter, almost sighing on a string through the universe toward a dark crevice in the human heart. Guitars breathe and subtle tones glimmer. Again, Dorrian's wild yet subdued drum craft features, causing my wife to say "I think seven minutes is enough time to find another instrument." The counter-argument to this sentiment is that the percussive skree behaves more as the rising and falling of a tide, rather than any kind of manic lack of tempo. This piece summarizes what Spartak are good at: strong sense of place amidst a seemingly hectic array of ambient sound, playfully putting into question the idea of "song."
Verona has many sounds, but it is one thing: a wonderful sounding experiment. Structures are as loose as they come, provoking folks to use terms like "high concept sound art." The pieces are a bit frenetic to be simple installation pieces, but it definitely would be neat to see the band playing in a Matthew Barney film. Australia's musical climate has helped forge yet another quality group crafting a listenable experimental release, and, while Verona feels like a stepping stone to the next big reveal for Spartak, it does not disappoint. This is quality sound adventuring.
-Nayt Keane