2024-03-27 16:22:37
The Dispute So far, the two have (more or less) only made EPs donated by their Patreon supporters Here, Hear. IV (2023) and the companion piece Meantime (2021) now also available to the general public.
„Here, Hear is an ongoing creative series born in 2007 as a way to deepen understanding of themes and ideas present in proper album releases through added musical and lyrical context for listeners interested in small peeks behind the songwriting curtain. Changing forms, approaches, and mediums periodically throughout it’s history, the current iteration of the project exists as creative writing prompts introduced and followed by one individual member before being passed along to the others one by one for contribution in a sort of musical game of telephone. The end results are songs written and recorded layer by layer, member by member, all around a central suggestion or restriction, discussed at length on Patreon and via recorded podcast conversations dissecting the experience.“ La Dispute explain the basic concept of the series, the third part of which, from today’s perspective, dates back almost fifteen years.
In more detail regarding this current restart, the band also states: “The most recent entry, titled “16,” began with a prompt from bass player Adam Vass called “This Song Will Self-Destruct” where contributing members were challenged to “break” something periodically as the composition progressed. The final product is what you hear: five musicians who took five different approaches to self-destruction, for a host of different reasons, and a song that slowly degrades as it heads toward its end, though it remains fully listenable despite the nature of the prompt.“
If you look more closely, it divides Here, Hear. IV to a certain extent into two poles, homogeneously strung together. Firstly, there is the duo Thirteen (in which dreamy post-rock guitars bubble and pluck a nostalgic melancholy in a reduced way, a piano appears and disappears once more, textures from the keyboard first show a choral elevation and then dystopian shadows, and in the end all the elements become Jordan Dryer’s melodic, sadly reciting spoken word -Connect lecture) and Fifteen (which drifts along the hallucinogenic bass line and lets its guitars float effortlessly like ambient Fugazi), which is typical Here, Hear.-MO follow.
And on the other hand, orient yourself Fourteen (which, with more groove and underpinned by gentle electronics, represents a band stroll quietly and peacefully driven by underlying tension) and Sixteen (which rumbles and rumbles like post-hardcore wrapped in a soft blanket with an effervescent, somewhat rougher climax, while Dryer’s nasal sound is reminiscent of Brian Molko) closer to the group’s classic album material.
That fits in with that Meantime-Material optimal, in every respect.
„In partnership with Here, Hear, the last few years have seen the introduction of a new writing exercise called MEANTIME, which flip La Dispute’s standard music-first approach to songcraft in favor of entries constructed by individual instrumentalists around spoken vocal recordings. Born from a desire to remain creatively engaged while apart during COVID shutdown, MEANTIME songs are poems before songs, words written and recorded that come to life sonically only when passed from vocalist Jordan Dreyer to one of the band’s musicians for structure, texture, and mood.“
Winding over an electronic piano Kinross the narrative is as hurried as it is factual and synthesizes; in The Crash a dystopian slow motion unfolds to sparse background strings; Light and Shadows pulsates muted; and the new, very great one Reformation lets the prairie guitar meander in the reverb. If in doubt, it’s more effervescent than intense – but either way it’s all very atmospheric, very atmospheric – if you take this side of it The Dispute mag.
similar posts
Print article
1711959486
#Dispute #Hear
