“Fast-paced” is pretty much the definition of modern life. Everybody’s got lightning-fast internet in their hip pockets, every chain restaurant has a drive-through or carry-out, every pharmacy has a “minute clinic”. Hell, even punk songs are getting quicker – a two-minute tune feels like an eternity when you have powerviolence bands ripping 15-second songs. So it’s nice to see bands like Baltimore’s Darsombra (Exile on Mainstream/Public Guilt/At A Loss) taking their time and giving their art some space to breathe and develop. As if to belabor the point, Climax Community starts with almost a minute of near-silence, gently coaxing you into its landscape with a barely audible drone. The epic “Roaming the Periphery” grows by aggregation: the vocals slide into scene like Himalayan and Gregorian chant a la Phillip Glass; synth strings slowly rise in an infinite Shepard Tone until they melt into a fuzzy, opaque matte of sound; scratches and other ephemera get caught in spacey loops, and towering, dissonant 6-note chords loom like mountains in the horizon. The song rises and falls so many times that, when you finally get to the blossoming climax, it hits you like a thousand feathers. The track pares itself down to a single note and evaporates before the ragged guitar of “Green” sweeps you up and sends you ambling down a dusty Wild West thoroughfare.
“Thunder Thighs” picks up where “Roaming the Periphery” left off; digital sitar stirs the air as meditative electric guitar solos, until it gives up the ghost to something darker. Now harsh guitar grows like a tidal wave, explodes into spaced-out grit and trasnforms the album into a surreal dreamscape. Prog lines weave in and out, nonsense lyrics burst in repetitive sound grids, the recurso breaks into fragments of deep echoes – and you’re back to the silence you started with. Climax Community, then, lives up to its name: Darsombra creates a vast world from so many meshed climaxes. Take the time to savor this album – scope it below, grab a copy from one of their many labels, and follow the band at Darsombra’s site. You won’t be sorry.
