Ultimately, \u2018Static Spirit\u2019 feels like standing outside during an electrical storm: exhilarating, ominous and charged with the knowledge that something could strike at any moment. Ancient Channels have created a magnificent world of barbed-wire dream pop and soft goth splendour\u2014dark, febrile and utterly immersive.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, \u2018Static Spirit\u2019 feels like standing outside during an electrical storm: exhilarating, ominous and charged with the knowledge that something could strike at any moment. Ancient Channels have created a magnificent world of barbed-wire dream pop and soft goth splendour\u2014dark, febrile and utterly immersive.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t88\/100\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBackseat Mafia Rating<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tiFalse Peak Records\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Ancient Channels<\/a>\u00a0are a supergroup of sorts, consisting of members from the myriad of talented bands operating in Meanjin\/Brisbane( including Terra Pines, Apparitions, and Deafcult), many of whom have been enthusiastically covered by us here at the antipodean outpost of Backseat Mafia.<\/p>\n They have just released their second album \u2018Static Spirit\u2019 and it\u2019s a scintillating piece of antithetically warm sounds with an Antarctic chill \u2013 a sort of barbed-wire dream pop, gently rendered goth.<\/p>\n There is something deliciously unsettling about \u2018Static Spirit\u2019. It shimmers and glows with an ethereal beauty, yet beneath its diaphanous surface lies something sharp enough to draw blood: a magnificent collision of barbed-wire dream pop and soft goth menace.<\/p>\n This is the band\u2019s second full-length album, following 2020\u2019s Moments in Ruin, and it feels both more expansive and more tightly wound. Across nine tracks, dreamy vocals drift over ambient guitars while the rhythm section maintains an insistent, sometimes predatory pulse. It is music caught in a perpetual state of nervous anticipation\u2014the sound of shadows lengthening in an empty room, of electricity humming behind the walls.<\/p>\n The brief opener \u2018Psychic Driver\u2019 serves as a gathering storm before \u2018Chimera\u2019 crashes through the door. When we premiered the latter last year, I described its angular guitars, pounding drums and sinuous bass as creating an atmosphere of controlled chaos. In the context of the album, it feels even more potent: the gateway into the strange, dark world Ancient Channels have built.<\/p>\n It quivers with an Antarctic intensity as the guitar creates shards of sound, the vocals distant and cold and delivered in a dream-like fugue. The result is something mysterious and ethereal with the feeling of a ritual or ceremony, building up to a chaotic thunder.<\/p>\n The band says:<\/p>\n \u2018Chimera\u2019 is about the struggle to contain anger in an environment designed to amplify it<\/p>\n It\u2019s a majestic and enigmatic release:<\/p>\n \u2018Black Metals\u2019 maintains the tension, propelled by a muscular post-punk spine while guitars curl and spark around the vocals. Ancient Channels have a remarkable capacity to be both dreamy and visceral\u2014to cloak menace in velvet and lace without ever blunting its edges. The vocals float with an almost narcotic calm above the turbulence, adding to the uncanny sense of stillness at the centre of a gathering maelstrom.<\/p>\n This exquisite duality is perhaps most apparent in \u2018Hex Beat\u2019. Hypnotic rhythms and icy synths create a stately gothic architecture while waves of guitar rise, break and dissolve into the ether. It is immersive and cinematic, imbued with a spectral grandeur: Siouxsie and the Banshees wandering into a shoegaze cathedral with John Carpenter lurking somewhere in the rafters.<\/p>\n But Static Spirit is far more than a careful assembly of influences. Ancient Channels have fashioned their own distinctive sonic terrain from eighties post-punk, psychedelia, darkwave and dream pop. \u2018Spiral Arms\u2019 unfurls with a mesmeric patience, its textures circling and expanding, while \u2018X Flares\u2019 carries an incandescent energy\u2014as if some celestial event were being observed through cracked and blackened glass.<\/p>\n There is an austere beauty throughout the album. Guitars don\u2019t merely chime; they glint like shards scattered across a darkened floor. Synths seep into the arrangements like mist, while the bass and drums keep everything earthbound and urgent. Even at their most atmospheric, Ancient Channels never simply drift. There is always movement, always a pulse, always the suggestion that something is pursuing you through the fog.<\/p>\n \u2018Beta Waves\u2019 deepens this sense of psychological unease, with additional synth from Joel Saunders adding another layer to the album\u2019s richly textured sound. \u2018Year of the Rats\u2019 has a more direct, coiled propulsion, capturing the sense of societal disquiet that courses through the record. The album is rooted in anxiety, unrest and the exhausting condition of living in permanent fight-or-flight mode, but it never feels didactic. These themes manifest physically\u2014in the taut rhythms, the frayed edges and that persistent sensation of something hovering just outside your field of vision.<\/p>\n Closing track \u2018Juniper\u2019 provides a suitably expansive finale. Rather than offering easy resolution, it leaves the door ajar and the darkness seeping in: an evocative conclusion to an album that thrives on ambiguity, tension and the strange allure of the unknown.<\/p>\n Recorded, mixed and mastered by Cameron Smith at Incremental Records, Static Spirit is a beautifully cohesive work. Bec Martin, Cameron Martin, Kelly Hanlon, Lloyd Martin and Talia Bond create a sound that is intricate without being cluttered and atmospheric without sacrificing impact. Every layer has purpose; every shimmering surface conceals a serrated edge.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Static Spirit feels like standing outside during an electrical storm: exhilarating, ominous and charged with the knowledge that something could strike at any moment. Ancient Channels have created a magnificent world of barbed-wire dream pop and soft goth splendour\u2014dark, febrile and utterly immersive.<\/p>\n Static Spirit is out now through the magnificent False Peak Records<\/a> (try their honey!) and is available digitally and on heavyweight black vinyl through the link above and digitally here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultimately, \u2018Static Spirit\u2019 feels like standing outside during an electrical storm: exhilarating, ominous and charged with the knowledge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[118476,2719,99,69979,118477,118478,4329,112109,152,2731,22440],"class_list":["post-78144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brisbane","tag-ancient-channels","tag-backseat-downunder","tag-brisbane","tag-dream-pop","tag-false-peak-records","tag-goth","tag-indie","tag-meanjin","tag-news","tag-pop","tag-shoegaze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}