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Raime

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Raime, “Tooth” (Blackest Ever Black, 2018)

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Four long years ago, Raime released an absolute monster of a debut album with Quarter Turns Over a Living Line. Since then, I periodically found myself wondering when Raime was going resurface and how Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead could possibly top such a visceral monolith of seething gloom. Apparently, they were wondering the exact same thing and ultimately decided not to even try. Instead, Andrews and Halstead have picked up guitars and reinvented themselves as a quasi-post-hardcore band, a detour much more in line with their Moin side-project. Aesthetically, I suppose that was not a bad move, but Tooth nevertheless feels quite under-cooked, one-dimensional, and lean on ideas. This probably should have been a single or an EP (at best).

For better or worse, the opening “Coax” essentially conveys the last four years of Raime’s evolution in just 4 minutes, though the magnitude (or lack thereof) of that evolution does not fully reveal itself until the album unfolds in exactly the same vein for several more songs. I suppose it may be a bit of an oversimplification to describe Raime as a post-hardcore band though, as the thick sub bass, simmering groove, and metallic percussion flourishes are hardly new for the duo. There are even some ominous synth-sounding swells that weave a characteristic aura of menace. The melodic foreground, on the other hand, is devoted to a very simple and dissonant guitar motif. The overall feel is one of tautness and smoldering, slow-burning tension, which is definitely something I can get behind. If Raime has moved into the rock realm, they have certainly done it with their stellar rhythmic instincts and ability to control a mood intact.

Unfortunately, the next song (“Dead Heat”) is essentially just more of the same. The groove is a bit more propulsive and the guitar riff is slightly different, but the riff variation is purely academic: it is just a different very simple, dissonant motif from the one in “Coax.” There are admittedly some nice howls thrown into the mix and some cool understated harmonics woven into the groove (and a wonderfully dull and ominous church bell-like sound, as well), but it definitely feels like a very close variation upon the previous theme. As does the following “Hold Your Line.” And just about everything after it. 

While I definitely admire the duo’s commitment to sinuous, stripped-to-the-bone minimalism and unreleased tension, whoever is playing guitar seems hopelessly fixated on flogging the same uncomfortably harmonized cluster of notes to death. The mood is unrelentingly monochromatic as well, which I will presume was a deliberate artistic choice and one that would have worked if the music was a bit more varied and interesting. As much I want to like it, however,Tooth just sounds like a band with a great rhythm section saddled with a monomaniacal guitarist who cannot stop playing the same damn riff and they all seem to be playing a single endless song that never evolves or catches fire. This is basically the musical equivalent of Sartre’s “No Exit.”

Of course, a lot of people seem to like this album a lot, so I guess that makes Tooth “polarizing” rather than unambiguously flawed. It definitely took some guts for Andrews and Halstead to cast aside a formula that had worked so well for them and I can definitely recognize how difficult it is to do what they are trying to pull off here. Unfortunately, I can also recognize that they did not quite succeed—at least not album-wise. 

Taken in single song doses, however, there is plenty to like here, particularly when the duo throw in any kind of unexpected element (like the shouts in “Stammer”). Every song feels so damn interchangeable when I try to make it through the entire album though, which makes for a very numbing and exasperating listen. Or an uncomfortable and claustrophobic one, if I am feeling charitable. Either way, I was a bit underwhelmed: Raime can definitely do better than this. I am going to optimistically chalk this one up as a promising transitional album, as I think there are still a few puzzle pieces that need to be added if Raime wants to keep pursuing this vein.

Listen here.

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Raime, “Quarter Turns Over a Living Line” (Blackest Ever Black, 2012)

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After a tantalizing two-year trickle of 12″ singles and an EP, this unrelentingly bleak UK post-industrial duo have finally released a full album. It was an event that I awaited with a mixture of anticipation and dread, however, as Raime had announced earlier that they had moved towards employing mostly live instrumentation, a decision that has historically not gone well for most electronic artists. It certainly went well here though, as this is easily Raime’s finest effort to date and a truly impressive evolution besides.

I have long been amazed by Raime’s relative popularity, as it seems like they have always been quite intent on being as cold and alienating as possible since their inception.Aside from the generally dank, claustrophobic, and airless feel of their work, they seem to be post-everything, eschewing anything resembling hooks or propulsive rhythms in favor of gloomy atmospheres and oddly shivering, slow motion beats. Perversely, Quarter Turns takes some of those tendencies to an even further extreme while also unexpectedly dissipating the duo’s characteristic suffocating darkness a bit.

On the “maximizing alienation” front, Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead have taken their already sparse, anxious beats into an even less danceable place this time around. While a couple of pieces maintain the skittering, dubstep-inflected beats of their previous releases, like “The Last Foundry” (a superior reprise of The Raime EP‘s “This Foundry”), most of the others are based upon a straightforward, glacial thump that is far more “death march” than “dancefloor.” The opening “Passed Over Trail” is subversive in yet another way, dispensing with a beat entirely, but offering some awesomely shuddering and distressed sub-bass in its place.

While I certainly enjoy such acts of genre subversion and stylistic contrarianism, this album would get boring very fast if that was the sole extent of Raime’s evolution. Fortunately (and much to my surprise), the switch to live instrumentation provides the perfect counterbalance to the duo’s escalating aversion to rhythm. In fact, Raime do not make a single false, clumsy, or unnecessary instrumental move. The mood, of course, remains as blackened as ever, but the subtle intrusion of human warmth and organic textures provides a necessary contrast that has been missing up until now, as the combination of sparse bleakness and bloodless artificiality was a bit too much for me to take in any kind of large dose.

The most beautiful manifestations of this new balance come at the end of the album. In “Your Cast Will Tire,” rattling, bowed guitar strings provide a sharp and visceral backbone while a mutant waltz beat and the coloration in the periphery create a deliciously escalating tension. Then, in “The Dimming of Road and Rights,” a simple violin motif unfolds over a lurching thump and an ominous repeating bass note. While it does not replicate the satisfying dynamic trajectory of its predecessor, it maintains a fragile and eerie beauty for its entire duration and offers some extremely cool and creative flourishes besides, like the occasion snarl of something halfway between guttural human speech and guitar noise or the presence of a second beat that sounds too distant to actually be part of the song.

While those highlights admittedly occur quite deep into the album, Quarter Turns is a remarkably strong, varied, listenable, and intelligently sequenced whole. There are a few instances where pieces take time to build, but the pay-off is always inevitably worth the wait as each of these seven songs are successful and memorable in their own way. In most cases, that way is textural, as Andrews and Halstead are able to wrestle some impressively gnarled and scorched noises out of their instruments and they are clever enough to provide ample space for their ingeniously ravaged sounds to be properly heard and felt. In fact, I doubt there is anything that could be improved about this album. It is almost certainly too skeletal and shadowy to offer much in the way of widespread appeal, but I am sure Raime have no interest in that at all—they accomplished exactly what they wanted to do masterfully, hauntingly, and distinctively. This is a serious contender for my favorite album of the year.

Listen here.