ComfortComes

Worriedaboutsatan – Arrivals

There is no way this album was recorded on earth. It wasn’t recorded in any place with an oxygen supply anyway.
 
Take ‘Evil dogs’ for one- a musical depiction of scuba diving without a wetsuit. You hear hollow breaths and mermaids singing. Then the mermaids are trying to drown you. Your lungs are just about to explode when suddenly you’re at the surface again and a mermaid – or is it just a regular girl? – assures you: ‘everything is going to be fine’. Her voice is clear and that’s how you know you’re safe on shore. ‘Evil dogs’ blends into the imaginatively named ‘.’ wherein your lifesaver leaves you with an impossibly long phone number.
 
Worriedaboutsatan – they have no spaces in their name, but their music is decidedly so. Spacey, that is. Gavin Miller and Tom Ragsdale hail from Leeds and create electronic music with a post-rock tinge. There are cellos and bass guitars and orchestras beaming sounds down from the stratosphere. Gavin and Tom start most of their compositions with a ticklish tune and unhurriedly sneak in the inevitable wall of sound. The result is that tracks like ‘I’m a crooked man’ make your eardrums feel like they’re turning cartwheels on the moon.
 
Like most of their songs, ‘History is made at night’ does not have any real vocals, but the music sounds like it’s being broadcast via telegraph through a thunderstorm. The skips are rhythmic enough but you can’t help thinking there’s a melody there that just isn’t getting through to you because of those accursed grey clouds. Luckily the reverb is undeterred.
 
‘All things but you are silent’ is a depiction of what happens when you finally gather up the nerve to ring up your mermaid lifeguard. You dial her number endlessly. She doesn’t reply. Her phone is off the hook. You’ve lost her. Move on to the title track.
 
Is it ironic that ‘Arrivals’ is the last track? Your mermaid leaves a message on your answering machine. You’re in the room as she speaks, too mesmerised by her voice to pick up the phone. As she goes on your heartbeat morphs from percussion into a stretchy guitar, crying out because she’s telling you that you can’t be together. Look – she’s a mermaid, you’re not. She lives underwater, you don’t. You have to move on, even though her ethereal voice is ever so spellbinding and your heart does make a beautiful sound when it’s in pain.
 
So what makes Worriedaboutsatan special? Their sound more so than their name. The guys make a foundation out of dots and dashes to build a wall of sound upon. You would expect the Morse code bit to come out on top and the reverb to form the bass/base, but somehow that doesn’t happen. Listen with headphones and you’ll feel them take up residence in the giant bean bag that is your brain.