24 September 2019

CARRION SUNFLOWER // VVLAD


The curiously prolific art/goth outfit CARRION SUNFLOWER left countless releases in their wake, and I keep coming across them. What seems like a dozen or more split cassettes, a few live recordings, small runs reproduced in questionable fidelity just to ensure that their wake will extend far further than their real time impact that ended a few years ago. Their side of this 2015 split features four pieces of dreary PTV-by-way-of-BAUHAUS and/or ULVER with droned/spoken vocals, leaning heavily on a manipulated acoustic guitar for ambiance. Self indulgent to be sure, but I highly recommend sinking into the murky recording and the hiss heavy duplication, CARRION SUNFLOWER make it worth the effort. On the flip, Norway's VVLAD offer one creepy ambient track, one piece of AM transistor radio quality dreary street corner insanity delivered with just a lonely guitar, and finish with a bizarre dose of awkward no-fi black metal that sounds almost as if someone pirated all of the elements from different sessions, different recordings...indeed even different bands, and placed them on top of one another to create a new being. It's a really weird listen, as with CARRION SUNFLOWER, but you need you let go, and let the bleak solitude envelop you.... 

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