Have you ever stared at an M.C. Escher painting? You know the ones. Where there’s a staircase that goes around and around but has no beginning or end. Or the flock of white birds flying one way and the flock of black birds flying the other. They’re a kind of optical illusion. You can see one thing, or another, yet trying to see both exposes a logical twist, making your brain feel very strange indeed. It’s an experience similar to listening to the new Boss Keloid album. But don’t worry, it’s a very good thing.
If you haven’t encountered Boss Keloid, their sound is a progressive mixture of rock, metal, stoner, doom, sludge and a lot more in between. It’s wrong to say they sound like Mastodon, but they don’t not sound like them. They exist in a similar creative space. Back in 2018 they caught everyone’s attention with the gruff beauty of ‘Melted On The Inch’. Three years later they earned accolades with the rich song-scapes of ‘Family The Smiling Thrush’. Their most recent album ‘The Calming Influence Of Teeth’ threw something of a curveball, featuring a more raw and riff-based repetitive sound. This new record takes a different direction. Over the course of an hour, the seven songs that constitute ‘Float & Aperture’ explore a richer and more varied sound. It doesn’t contain simple songs, or short songs, and each feels like a mass of contradictions, but it’s easily their most accessible work. There’s even a chorus or two.
On previous records their work often felt more like abstract art similar to Picasso, where a series of incongruent shapes and images represent a feeling. Here the songs seem to work in the opposite direction. The best way to describe the music is as a jam session where everyone’s playing a different song. While that might sound off-putting, what results is Paul Swarbrick and Alex Hurst using their guitars to evoke feelings with effective emotional depth. As their shifting styles switch between bright licks and effect-pedal filters, they create a strange tapestry. That’s where it’s reminiscent of an Escher painting. You can hear one part, or another, but the way they fit together has an uncomfortable logic. It’s an extremely intoxicating sound, almost like a magic trick.
While the guitars often feature effects like wah-wah, the most interesting choice is a pitch-shifted sound. It takes prominence on the wandering parts of ‘Landslide’, where the light notes glisten strangely while the heavier riffs feel blurred in the opposite direction. Nonetheless, you can feel it threaded throughout. It’s a choice that helps shape the record’s character, giving it a loose, indistinct quality, but it never feels intangible. The reason for this is the drums. The rolls, like the ones that open ‘Breeze’, feel massive but the smaller sounds, like the thump and tick and constant tink-tink, all have a real gravity so they cut across the songs in different ways. On the loose, watery ‘Weight’ it feels like Ste Arands is steering a ship across the ocean, fighting against the musical tides and forcing the sound to shift direction. This gives it an unpredictable energy and it’s a joy to listen to.
One of the album’s most notable elements is the way Alex Hurst’s gruff singing takes prominence. Compared to their previous work it’s more flavoured and is expressed as a kind of country rocker sound. It gives the album a more approachable, carefully crafted vibe which is where you really feel the band’s evolution. In fact ‘Pedestal’ almost sounds like a ‘proper’ song despite the music twisting and squirming beneath his voice. Throughout the album’s runtime, he scatters some really cool vocal motifs like on ‘Aros’ where he sings the word ‘around’ with the weight of an iron girder or on the heavier sections of ‘Accord’ where he gets to use a big, distorted bellow that emphasises the song’s tempestuous emotions.
The album’s overall feel is one of interaction and it has a crisp, clean sonority that sounds as if it was recorded live. There’s certainly a depth and honesty to the sounds, especially in how notes ring out, giving it texture while enhancing its differing flavours. Notably the bass stands out on ‘Aros’ and there is an delightful Eastern style to the refrain that holds ‘Landslide’ together.
Every song is a trove of interwoven ideas and it is difficult to pick highlights. The most obvious choices are the watery tones of ‘Aros’ which feel particularly inspired or writhing, tickling guitar riffs and clicking muted parts on ‘Breeze’. However the album is rich in sonic experiments, especially on landslide’ where their contrasting guitar styles create an evolving, uncomfortable picture that constantly feels like it’s slipping away.
Although the Escher staircase goes around and around without beginning or end, the real marvel is its construction. Similarly the record’s layout means that although the songs lead into each other, it’s their relative positions that enhance the overall experience. Because the track length tapers inward, becoming longer and then trailing away, it gives the album quite an unusual flow. However, the amazing feat is that it retains focus and cohesion despite the rolling, twisting song style. It’s not as simple as being the band’s ‘best’ album but it is a clearer and more effective expression of their ideas. Whichever way you look at it ‘Float & Aperture’ is a work of art.
IAN KENWORTHY