With the buzz of static and the whirring of sounds of unknown origin, we enter the lofty and epic world of Dredg’s second concept album to date: El Cielo.
Stirring Zepplinisms, and ad hoc prog aplenty it’s hardly a very cautious follow up to the recently re-released, Leitmotif album (Interscope). Together for nearly a decade, Dredg’s often intense yet strangely melodic sound is something of an acquired taste. Fluid, though endlessly tangential, fans of the band are becoming well accustomed to the ‘organic’ and ‘expansive’ journeys the band co-navigate.
Recorded primarily at George Lucas’s Skywalker ranch studios in the Marin hills, north of San Francisco with producers, Ron St Germain (Tool, Creed) Tim Palmer (U2, Pearl Jam) and Jim Scott (Red Hot Chili Peppers) El Cielo is a frequently grand and complex manifestation of a condition known as ‘Sleep Paralysis’. Often responsible for spurious claims of alien abduction and out of body experiences, ‘Sleep Paralysis (or El Cielo) is alleged to seize control of all bodily faculties, often debilitating the sufferer entirely, and occasionally, just occasionally, alleged to be accompanied by dark, demonic presences. Heavy stuff, yeah? Well it doesn’t get any lighter.
To the eclectic bombast of drum circles, Bulgarian chants, crop circles, thrift store trumpet solos, and damsels with dulcimers the album segues loose, dissociated chatter and white noise through an endless flow of musical fragments and lucid, dreamlike narratives. Peripheral and industrial elements proliferate, and the prog hungry thrust of searing guitars and Celil B de Mille sized drum flourishes are punctuated only by moments of pulsating quietude, and protracted silences. And whether or not you like it, able bodied vocalist, Gavin Hayes takes the Morrisey approach to lyrics by succesfully cramming as many syllables as possible into the broken grammar of the songs. Like I said, you might like it, you might not.
Whilst tracks like ‘Sorry It’s Over’ recall the pursed-lips of Radiohead and Muse at their most angst-up and surreal, ‘Scissor Lock’ recalls the hymnal yet android spirit of Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails – and it’s here that the album works, quite remarkably. ‘Convalescent’ on the otherhand manages to stir the very welcome spectre of the quintessentially English XTC. Listen to this track back to back with the gentle, medieval charm of something like ‘Knights In Shining Karma’ or ‘River of Orchids’ off the Apple Venus I album if you don’t believe me.
Radiohead, Martin Grech, Tool, Muse, Atticus Fault, XTC, Nine Inch Nails – it’s all in there. The fact that the band toured with heavy rap-metal band, Alien Ant Farm may be a little misleading but it should be every indication of how seriously they’re being received. Get them on a show with current Kerrang sweetheart, Martin Grech and people may just begin to get the point.
It’s an album you’re likely to approach with caution – but misgivings aside, it’s a sumptuous and miraculous ride all the same.