(AAGOO RECORDS EP; 2014)
I’ve always said that if something doesn’t sound just like something else I’ve heard, I will listen to it extra attentively. I suppose that’s one of my guiding MOs as a music writer. This peculiar Italian outfit, Father Murphy, sounds like almost NOTHING else. So I gave them an especially close listen and was rather stunned by what I heard. It’s some kind of nightmarish cinematic new-ambient drone/squonk punctuated by purposeful chants and dialogue, pounding percussion and, surprisingly, space to reflect. A couple of sentences in the press material provided for this four-song EP provided a compelling way in; the music is described as “the sound of the Catholic sense of guilt, a downward spiral aiming at the bottom of the hollow and then digging even deeper.” So, a party record, then? Not hardly, unless you want to clear the party quickly and be left only with the open-minded, contemplative types you prefer hanging out with anyway. This is the kind of music you experience when you’re in a certain weird mood, and want to literally be pulled out of your reality and maybe plunged into the deepest well of contradictory, destructive human behavior, to hear what the soundtrack to such might be.
On “Let the Wrong Rise With You,” it means you get a dark, ominous, machine-like drone which is soon hijacked by abrasive industrial percussion that could be the soundtrack to a terrorist group of unknown origin suddenly marching into a village (I couldn’t help thinking of Boko Haram, actually, who have been so much in the news lately). This shifts into a mid section of distorted horns or the like with a sinister drone underneath, and then a third section of plainly heard single keyboard tones that are nearly melodic in nature, with a bit of percussion here and there. Whatever the Reverend Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee (the two singer/multi-instrumentalists responsible for all this) are up to here, it certainly has few reference points. Apparently, Julian Cope and Deerhoof are fans; the latter’s Greg Saunier produced the EP. And, Simon Reynolds has helpfully dubbed this “Italian occult psychedelia.” Certainly you’ll think of occulty things when listening to “They Will All Fail You,” which begins with the sound of glass shattering and soon treats you to the sound of various disturbed voices yelling, one of which sounds like “Trial, trial, trial,” over and over, which may indeed be what some listeners go through when subjected to this. A pounding sound, a male voice yelling a word that sounds like “Horror” repeatedly, and a dark ambient drone will make you think you’re in a very bad place, indeed – the kind of thing that happens when you watch a foreign horror movie. Children may have been harmed in the making of this music, or perhaps this is music ABOUT children being harmed… there’s that Catholic guilt thing again, I suppose. “Despite All the Grief” managed to surprise me even in the context of what preceded it, due to what is a relatively quiet low-frequency rumble/drone that is only interrupted by maybe 28 seconds of industrial-strength clanging, reminiscent of the music in the first Bartertown scenes in MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME. There is something utterly willful about the way these tracks are arranged and performed; a potent aesthetic is at work. And, listening to samples of previous work by this group, such as 2012’s ANYWAY, YOUR CHILDREN WILL DENY IT, online only reveals that something quite original and determinedly provocative is happening here.
You’ve heard the phrase “uneasy listening?” This is THAT. There is nothing cheery or comforting about Father Murphy, but lordy, if you have a taste for dark, immersive, non personality-based cine-music, this may be something to lose yourself in. Best recommended if you’re a LAPSED Catholic or “other” in the religious column, though. If you’re still going to mass and taking communion, well, you’re liable to head straight for confession after hearing this stuff.