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Locrian

REVIEWS & PRESS

Locrian "Drenched Lands" CD (Small Doses 043/At War With False Noise 053)
Since their inception in late 2005, Locrian have been honing their sound; working and re-working material; finding the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal to work into their sound. Drenched Lands is Locrian's first full-length studio recording of all new material, and unfolds with an almost narrative structure. It starts with a slow descent into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began - completely transformed. The hour-long disc is rounded out by an extended bonus track previously unavailable in any digital format. The black-on-black disc packaged in an arigato pack with a 4-panel insert. Edition of 1000 copies. Co-released by At War With False Noise.

Locrian / Colossus, split cassette (Heavy Nature Tapes)
Locrian / Continent, split cassette (self-released]
First up's a nice pairing of drone-crafters from Chicago (Locrian) and New Hampshire (Colossus), who approach the concept from different angles, but still end up amid fields of bliss. Locrian start with a big old bell, then slowly pile on strings and keys until everything throbs. Colossus have a study more psychadelically organic -- focusing on shifting string drones, intercut with voices and birdsong in a manner that feels at times like a tribute to Agitation Free. When they meet Arizona's Continent, Locrian spike and layer their sounds into something much less dronoid. Perhaps in anticipation of Continent's coarse-tongued Metal riffage. - Byron Coley, The Wire (October 2008)

"Plague Journal/Apocryphal Cities, Portents Fallen" 7" (Bloodlust!)
Debut vinyl by a Chicago duo who spoon through the night mounted upon a guitar or a synth. It's a noisy piece of work, but the sonic textures are closer to rock (maybe born amidst the debris of a party Killing Joke had just left). The first side is a ride through a wind tunnel, the flip is like a more gracefully arcing dive into a pile of inflatable balloons shaped just like Fripp & Eno on the cover of "No Pussyfooting". But they don't pop when you hit them, they just blast you back into space with a bruise to show for your troubles. Go figure. - Byron Coley, Size Matters Column, The Wire (May 2008)

"Greyfield Shrines" LP (Diophantine Discs)
This murky combination of raw electronics and mistreated guitar that knows when it's time to roar, and time to just menace makes for a strong entry into the vinyl world for this relatively new project. What a debut it is though, in an ambiguous letterpressed sleeve and heavyweight marbled vinyl. Luckily, the quality of the music presented (a live session for WHPK radio) matches the packaging quite well.

Consisting of two side-long tracks, the first half begins calm and restrained, near silence but allowing a subtle bed of chiming guitar to slowly but surely increase in volume and makes its presence known. The guitar begins to shriek and howl in ways Leo Fender and Les Paul never intended as more frightening electronic elements begin to creep into the mix. From such humble beginnings it becomes a complex intertwining mix of sinister sounds and ends rhythmically with a locked groove. I must admit, my first listen to this while I was doing other things caused me to be stuck on that locked groove for a good five minutes or so before I realized it was time for Side B. The sound was diverse enough that I listened for that long without realizing it was just literal repetition.

The flip side starts where the other left off: a harsh mix of guitar abuse and ventilator white noise keeping the ambience dark before eventually allowing a rhythmic bass element to underpin the increasingly violent guitar. While the first half exercised restraint, the second half is much more chaotic with low frequency siren tones, feedback solos, and looped guitar elements vying to be the center of attention before all retreats and the track ends in a slow disintegration to silence.

As a whole Greyfield Shrines holds my interest as there are definite elements of drone and noise, with both trading off as being the prevailing motif, but the actual sounds set it apart from similar artists. I'm happy to hear actual guitar tones in drone rather than just overdriven A minor chords, and also in noise without the battery of effects layered over it to render it unidentifiable. - Creaig Dunton, www.brainwashed.com

"Greyfield Shrines" LP (Diophantine Discs)
Two massive pieces of noise/drone/metal ritual exploration locked in a landscape of left-handed black urbanity. Staged in slow, detailed demolition movements, Locrian have a focus that doesn't fall into either chin stroking or weeded out jam-mode. Generatingthe atmosphere of a dark that's definitely of this world and era - norambling basement bullshit for this duo - Greyfield Shrines manifeststhe sound of jackals seeking prey in abandoned malls. Locrian's vision is an internalised one, a view that's expressed through ferocious volume with a finger that remains on the trigger guard. - Scott McKeating, Rock-a-rolla (Issue Number 18, 2009)

"Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival" Tape (Self-Released)
Sometimes the gap between structure and noise can seem that little bit closer, acts like Locrian forming tentative unconscious bridges between the two. Clouds roll down through "Burying The Carnival", billowing buildings like a tsunami pouring through the pageant. Serrated echoes spin past the speakers, Locrian further perfecting their brand of firmly placed brick and mortar slaughter. Both their loop-and-heave guitar shredding and the candour of their reality-rooted atmospheres take equal placing, this side of the cassette balancing both on the limits of unforgiving. Locrian's music makes its point in beleaguering much of their peer group, maybe there's something in the air but this piece feels like rolling tanks and the confused brunt of burn-out scrambled radio communications.

"Exhuming The Carnival" is a more liminal piece, its border falling between post-rock's looser ideas and the warped slow collapse of buildings. Daunting and uninviting with its mood hanging low in the sky, the peals of guitar anchored to earth via silken webs. More of a reconsecration than the sweat, mud and stench of an exhumation – this cassette is well worth digging out. Rating: 8 out of 10 - Scott McKeating, 1/14/09, www.foxydigitalis.com

Locrian/Katchmare split 7" (PilgrimTalk Records)
Locrian "Greyfield Shrines" LP (Diophantine Discs)
Two more releases for Chicago's dark, foreboding guitar/drone duo Locrian. The split 7" with Katchmare matches up the former's thick, heavy, feedback-laden punishment with the latter's signal torture and high-volume pressure/insanity complex to satisfying effect. Greyfield Shrines, recorded live on college radio station WHPK, builds with an organic, spreading menace over two sides from cautious drone into cyclical, delay-based riffing, the kind you'd find in certain strains of black metal were that genre a bit more poker-faced. The levels of thick, evil, cinematic horror Locrian creates are beginning to become more pronounced, and these recordings feature the outfit reaching peak powers. Essential to those who like noise but have grown weary of the low level of entry. 100 copies on the split, slightly more on the LP. Both are on gray vinyl and are packaged in gorgeous letterpressed sleeves. - Doug Mosurock, www.dustedmagazine.com

"Plague Journal/Apocryphal Cities, Portents Fallen" 7" (Bloodlust!)
Two sides of atmospheric post-industrial drone for guitar and machines. There's a picture of a wind-damaged storefront on the insert, which makes a lot of sense, I suppose. Synths and loops and oscillators provide the background, noise and scrape, while the guitar scratches out a few melodic blues riffs. Pretty nice take on what can sometimes be a tough thing to bring across on vinyl without sounding overwrought. 300 copies, white vinyl, white sleeve. - Doug Mosurock, www.dustedmagazine.com

Release show for "Rhetoric of Surfaces" CD and "Greyfield Shrines" LP
Local doom-drone duo Locrian recently released Rhetoric of Surfaces (Bloodlust!), their first proper CD after a string of cassettes and CD-Rs, and Greyfield Shrines (Diophantine Discs), their first vinyl LP, and both sound like the music you'd expect to hear piped into a museum of the exorcism arts. Looming monoliths of distorted synthesizer erode in slow motion while a brittle, hazy guitar line wavers slowly back and forth like a rusty weathervane creaking in the wind. And then: the voices. Disembodied howls rising from the devil's asshole. Greyfield Shrines is a single long-form composition—how long depends on you, since there's a locked groove at the end of side one—and its beautiful, eerie tones are matched by its beautiful, eerie packaging. It's pressed on tornado gray vinyl in an edition of 300 and the cover is a silver-on-black negative image of an abandoned shopping mall. On Rhetoric of Surfaces the title of the closing track, "Amps Into Instruments," serves as both statement of purpose and pithy thumbnail of the band's music—the better-known half of Locrian, multi-instrumentalist Terence Hannum, just pitched Continuum a proposal for a book about Earth 2. Indian headlines; Bloodiest and Locrian open. - J. Niimi