However, it’s the ingenuity of the process behind the music which stands out most prominently – the blending of shoegaze and post-rock is an idea which has been shockingly relatively untouched despite the popularity of both genres and ‘Ujubasajuba’ is a perfect means of demonstrating the perfection the genres can achieve, where post-rock makes up for any subtle limitations of shoegaze and shoegaze provides an emphatic new aspect into post-rock by making a genre not normally known for being overtly active into one which is dynamic, enthusiastic and entrancing. What Kairon IRSE! offer is a harkening back to the early days of shoegaze, where ‘Loveless’ roamed as king, with a modern post-rock driven spin. Admittedly, this does seem to be an absurd suggestion – a band hailing from Kaustinen, Finland (population: 4,294) releasing an album with a nonsensical title (which seems to have no official translation – if indeed it can be translated) releasing a better shoegaze album than the very band which invented the genre? The need for questioning this, however, soon becomes irrelevant upon hearing the opening track ‘Valorians’ (which does derive the opening drumming from My Bloody Valentine song ‘Only Shallow).

In 2013, My Bloody Valentine made their long anticipated return to the fray of the music world with their sudden release of ‘mbv’, which was fittingly heralded as one of the year’s best albums and a more than worthy return for the undisputed kings of shoegaze. What this results in an album which stands as Wolfe’s strongest release yet, expressing a sense of musical versatility – ranging from the heaviest sides of metal to the most resonating parts of electronic – while, also, maintaining the dark folk lyricism which earned Wolfe such a dedicated following in the first place.ģ0 Albums of 2014 - Day 28: Kairon IRSE! - Ujubasajuba However, what is most captivating about ‘Abyss’ is that the atmosphere of haunting minimalistic lyrics (‘like the morphine’/’you take it all away’/’pretend it’s okay’ – ‘Grey Days’) contrast the slow building resonating nature of the albums instrumentation – with the effect being that listeners are slowly falling deeper into the isolating world Wolfe has unveiled to us. The most prominent effect of this progression is that ‘Abyss’ engages listeners by concocting a unique soundscape for each song, the aforementioned sense of clashing in ‘Iron Moon’, for instance, is starkly different to the morose sincerity of the murky ballad-esque ‘Maw’. This is perhaps no more prominent than in ‘Iron Moon’ where the haunting softness of Wolfe’s vocals are often sinking beneath the sludge metal stylistic droning feedback of heavy guitars (courtesy of Russian Circles Mike Sullivan) and slow, temperamental yet incisive drumming from the returning Dylan Fujioka.Īs a result, ‘Abyss’ thrives as an indicator of progress and versatility which has only previously been explored as a curiosity on albums past ( an example being ‘Feral Love’ from the 2013 album ‘Pain is Beauty’). Whereas Wolfe’s earlier works (Such as 2011 classic ‘Apokalypsis’) leaned heavily on a tenuous folk style to slightly mask the greater fragility present in each album ‘Abyss’ is symbolic of a descent into disorder and, consequently, Wolfe’s growing solemnity and acceptance of this. ‘Abyss’ is the epochal album of a growth in intense, metallic graphed ethereal presence in the musical expression of Chelsea Wolfe.

Kairon irse valorians lyrics