the bizzare songbook of stealstealground

stealstealground
stealstealground
(66nopoor productions, 2005)
http://hk.geocities.com/stealstealground

another good hong kong band. pennylane and ah wing are sister and brother. apparently, pennylane secretly recorded her voice over ah wing's guitar track and hence, the band moniker which is a literal word-for-word translation of “secretly” in cantonese. that first composition air guitar provides the template for the remaining album – voices simply accompanied by strummed or plucked guitar with occasional electronic tones. the songs are folksy. some would deem them experimental.

the often double or triple-tracked vocals are often off key and there is plenty of girl-boy vocal exchange between the siblings that sounds unharmonious. i can imagine a lot of people dissing this album based on that alone, but the stye is carefree, and coupled with cryptically introspective lyrics, the songs are undoubtedbly moving. the album reminds me of bogdan raczynski's my love i love, where his pitch imperfect voice is mixed with idm and live instrumentation to craft gentle love songs for the terminally sad.

stealstealground's songs are not happy, dealing with depression, death and loneliness. one inch pays posthumous tribute to elliott smith with pennylane singing with resignation, “from the streets to the sea, from the pores to your veins, we died before we met.” cross your heart conjures images of visceral pleasure and pain with lines like “use my sharpest tongue to carve her name on your chest... use my hair to wander on your body, stitch by stitch sew her name.”. elsewhere, there is a lament for being young and lonely with the song swimming bird. and then there is it's morning, don't be sad, a song about waking up, feeling down and wanting to die. a classic symptom of depression.

like a bizzare campfire songbook, the songs are catchy and terrifying, bearing a beauty that is hard and fragile at the same time. i might not want to listen to the album too much, but when i want to hear and sing along, the effect is cathartic.

astreal progression

astreal
fragments of the same dead star
(emi, 2006)
www.astreal.net

the name astreal is almost a misnomer, now that its sole original member is muhammad. yet, more than 8 years after its debut ouijablush, the band with its new members trudges on and we have the long-awaited sophomore fragments of the same dead star!

the new album contains brand new songs, studio versions of their past 'live' material, all three tracks from the projection e.p. and rerecorded versions of two earlier released songs. frankly, i am a fan of the old sound – a mix of shoegazer, krautrock and synth pop, smoothed out by melissa's vocals. for me, part of the attraction of early astreal is melissa’s voice. reminding me of a gloomier and dreamier laetitia sadier from stereolab, her tone is resonant but soft, cool but not cold.

oh well, that is history. astreal has evolved and the new astreal has earned their chops through gigs that rock and encapsulate audiences in dense sounds of guitars and effects. the new sound is darker, harder and grittier, best compared to songs that fuse rock-style guitars and drums with electronica by bands such as m83, curve and ladytron. it only seems like a natural progression as astreal dissolved and reformed, moving away from songs such as the sugary june 12 on ouijablush to the unsettling blush response on the no excuse compilation. both songs are rerecorded here with ginette on vocals.

thankfully, ginette is a competent replacement for melissa, sounding wistful on the slow flowing songs and defiant on the fast rocking ones. almost every track on the album is of single material. a favourite is wallflower that when played out loud, hits and washes over me like waves crashing to shore with multi-tracked vocals and guitars. another favourite is control that has ginette fighting to be heard against a machine of buzzing guitars and ringing cymbals.

my only grouse is the production has placed the guitars too upfront, leaving the drums thudding rather weakly in the background for most tracks. but this is a personal preference that hardly affected my enjoyment of the eagerly-anticipated release.