She is one of the vast pantheon of Hindu gods. She is definitely one of the most referenced and well-known.
There are very few artists capable of invoking this complex and terrible god, of paying her the due homage. I can really only think of one...
Jarboe, her name forever pursued by the suffix: '(formerly of Swans)'. Sometimes enigmatically referred to as The Living Jarboe. Raised in New Orleans. A classically-trained singer. Background in gospel and jazz. She joined Swans early on - her rich, honeyed mezzo-to-contralto a counterpoint to the grave-deep basso of Michael Gira. She credits Gira with transforming her into a rock vocalist; of teaching her to bite the words until they bleed between her teeth. Between her vocals and keyboards she added a layer of melodicism to the roiling, industrial clamour of that legendary band. Since then she has released a multitude of discs on a variety of labels, some independently. She has been part of more collaborations than Kali has limbs.
She is a fearless and restless vocalist. Her 'clean' singing voice is deep, lavish and nuanced; poignant and with subtle vibrato. But to that voice she adds a litany of others, so much so that she has been deemed 'the woman of a thousand voices'. She can variously sound like a child, a ghost, a siren, a seducer, a predator, a raging harpy, a ravening ghoul, an angel, or the victim of demonic possession. She whispers, growls, pants, hisses, shrieks, gibbers, moans and cackles.
Her music is equally varied. From the earliest of her solo discs onwards there has been evidence of a range of genres and styles - ghostly folk, gospel, sprawling southern blues, heaving industrial grime, avant-garde pop, choral electronics, and spindly dance rhythms. From the skewed exotica and psychedelia of 'Beautiful People Ltd' with multi-instrumentalist Lary Seven (an album that features a wonderful reworking of 'I Feel Pretty' - a boisterous, joyous pop ditty that seems forever at risk of collapsing into a whirlpool of dissonance) to the layered synths, repeating vocal mantras and grinding guitars of 'J2', her collaboration with Justin K. Broadrick (of Jesu and Godflesh) - an album that burns and hisses like the filament of a light-bulb (okay, so maybe I'm just linking the sound to the album cover, but to hell with it). Her music can be melancholy, hopeful, hypnotic, playful, introspective, macabre, and hymnal. It can also, on occasion, be very dark indeed.
One album looms large in her discography, its ghost haunting the sonic worlds of her later releases: her collaboration with legendary post-metallers Neurosis. This disc is succinctly titled: 'Neurosis & Jarboe' (Neurot Records). Just in case you didn't know - post-metal is an experimental genre heavily influenced by doom metal. The music tends to be extremely dense and thickly-layered, the songs building in slow intervals - smouldering away until they climactically erupt in a cathartic conflagration of guitar/bass/keys/percussion squalls. Neurosis are one of the leading lights in the genre - others include Isis, Battle of Mice and Red Sparrowes. Seething is an apt description of the music.
'Neurosis & Jarboe' is an immense, monolithic work. It towers: black, bleak and unknowable, the musical equivalent of the obelisk in '2001; A Space Odyssey'. I personally will forever be haunted by 'Within' - song that subverts religious certainty by juxtaposing it with an epically-creepy nursery-rhyme about an abductor and Recovered Memory Syndrome. Jarboe makes it seem that the God the narrator waits upon will be a vengeful and monstrous one indeed. "I tell ya, if God wants to take me, he will" she intones in her commanding speaking voice, her Southern accent very apparent. Before following with the chilling, whispered "He's coming..." while beneath her vocals writhing, smoke-choked layers of synth and bass shift like the plates under the earth. This sure as hell isn't the cuddly, benevolent God of the New Testament. It may not even be the scowling, testing God of the Old Testament. This is God reinvented as the monster under the bed, as the bogeyman.
There are echoes of this album to be heard in 'MahaKali' (particularly the post-metal influence and the use of slow, simmering builds), but it is a very different beast. Again, Jarboe is joined by some striking collaborators. Here we find Attila Csihar - a survivor of infamous, black-metal miscreants Mayhem (pretty much every disturbing, horrifying thing you've ever heard about the Norwegian black metal scene is down to this band and its ever-shifting line-up) and occasional Sunn O))) conspirator (my favourite tale about this latter band is that the first time they performed live - a thirty minute set with the band concealed behind an immense speaker system - the audience assumed they were roadies performing a sound-check). We also have Phil Anselmo formerly of Southern metallers Pantera and...erm...Southern doomsters Down. They are joined by cellist Kris Force of experimental neo-classical group Amber Asylum.
Now, I'm wary of concept albums at the best of times, and dammit if I don't have cause to be. Primarily concept albums seem the domain of widdly, wank-handlers with their ludicrously technical prog-style musicianship and towering sense of self-importance. But consider also the brace of eighties fantasy-styled 'Metal Opera' discs - where the narrative plays out like the 'Lord of the Rings' rip-off that weird, sullen kid was always writing back in High School - the story full of derivative plot twists, dark lords, magical weapons and alarming sexual violence. Either that or they're wildly incoherent - think of Queensryche's 'Operation Mindcrime' saga, or Marilyn Manson's incomprehensible 'Holywood Triptych'. Then there's the relentlessly depressing ones - Nine Inch Nails 'The Downward Spiral' (young man struggles with depression, tries to lose himself in drugs, sex and religion...finally kills himself, possibly by overdose or gunshot "so much blood for such a little hole" - I think, please correct me if I'm wrong). Or the maddeningly pretentious (Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'). Too often the shoddy, crayon-scribbled narrative derails the flow of the album - forcing the artist to have all kinds of weird interludes and filler instrumentals that only serve to advance a story you have no desire to follow anyway. Janelle Monae's 'Android Suites' are probably the best of the lot (although pretty damn near impossible to comprehend) considering their mix of forbidden love, android revolutions, mental illness, time travel and a futuristic dystopia inspired by Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'. But even then, I buy the albums for the songs...not the tale.
However, 'MahaKali' is thematic rather than conceptual; there is no overarching narrative, there are no characters. It is a song cycle that invokes that ash-skinned and sky-eating goddess; a series of hymns in her name...each track seeking to capture some aspect of her complex and contradictory nature. As such it passes from seething darkness (depicting destruction, annihilation, the all-consuming fire) into gentler, lighter territory (the world reborn: raw-boned and vulnerable).
'MahaKali, of Terrifying Countenance' opens the album. It begins with the swirl and swoon of atmospheric keys, the creep-crawl of distorted guitars, piano chords tumbling darkly down through infinite space. Suddenly Jarboe's voice enters at full, exalted howl - an overdubbed and multi-tracked choir of wordless ululations. The song erupts, shifts from melancholy towards wildness.
'House of Void (Visceral Mix)' sees a roiling sea of stressed-out guitars and bass over a rhythmic, tribal beat. Riding the seething mass is Jarboe's voice; achingly lovely and exquisitely pure - her cadence is odd, striking, faintly inhuman (as ever) - rendingly melodic as it crests the dissonance below.
'Transmogrification' is all blackened doom riffing and distressed electronics. Jarboe shifts her voice from eerily childlike, to rapturous choral, to stentorian spoken word, and finally to hungry, animalistic panting.
Album highpoint - for me at least - 'The Soul Continues' opens with basso throat-singing; like monks chanting from a lightless stone temple. Attila Csihar enters first, over feedback snarls and snaggers. He bellows a mantra in full death-style baritone. Floor toms surface from the murk - a thundering pulse that drives the song relentlessly forward - lending it a tribal, world music vibe. A thick fugue of church organ drones take over the melody and the music transforms into a ritual piece - an inverted hymn to a terrible god. Jarboe's voice flows over Csihar's guttural mantra - golden-hued and rich with vibrato - sweeping and swooping across the rhythm of the track. It's an intense, powerful and hypnotic performance from all involved.
'A Sea of Blood and Hollow Screaming' (man, these song titles...) is black metal deconstructed down to layers of atmospheric drones and scraped cellos; a beat-less, slithering miasma. Blackened, Neo-Classical Drone Doom? Jarboe pushes her vocal well beyond conventional use with this one; gurgling, rasping and snarling. Disconcertingly, she sounds at times like a child singing through a mouthful of blood.
Now, I've never thought much of Philip H. Anselmo as a vocalist but on 'Overthrown' he inspires me to completely reevaluate his talents. He takes the lead here - his voice split across the three speaker channels, playing call-and-response with itself. Jarboe lends ghostly atmospherics - her vocal fluttering and evanescing in the background. Over ragged acoustic guitar - playing a Southern blues-style riff - Anselmo alternates his sandpaper howl with fragments spoken in his strikingly deep and compelling natural range. He sounds frigging amazing here - his visceral, bluesy wail recalling Chris Cornell in his prime.
Later Jarboe reprises this piece herself - taking the lead vocal and repeating the mantra in an oddly enunciated fashion - to dizzying effect. In place of the slithering blues guitar she employs a skittering dance pulse and trembling synth-pads. It is a surprisingly upbeat number, danceable if you've the limbs for it, an effect utterly subverted when the song collapses into a disturbing choir of screams and wails.
'Bornless' finds her adopting a creeped-out cutesy voice, squeaking over gurgling bass/guitar textures and scraps of found sound, all pinned in place by a circular, loping drum beat. Here, juxtaposed against the queasy roil of the instrumental arrangement her 'child' voice is unnerving ...and delightful.
'Mouth of Flames' is a rich, folk-influenced piece; lovely, delicate and spacious. An acoustic guitar pattern plucked over and over, fingers squeaking and hushing across the strings, Jarboe's voice is ripe and sweet as dripping honey; warm, melodic and deep, as instantly recognizable as ever.
Tension mounts again in 'Ascend' over a low-slung steel-string guitar riff and a driving drum groove. Jarboe drops her voice into a sharp-toothed whisper - feral, urgent, almost sexual and threatening ...it compels.
'Violence' is an instrumental - all chittering, sparking electronic effects (recalling Brian Eno's work with Nico). It sounds like a collapsing void full of flames and the beating of terrible wings. 'Empty Mouth' closes the album - reprising the main lyric from 'Mouth of Flames' - here spoken over silence, her voice is deep, commanding. And so it ends; the track counter running empty, the disc hissing to a halt. The ritual is complete; the goddess Kali invoked and exorcised.
Both the mix and production on this album are expertly-judged - clear enough to preserve the nuances and textural detail of the music, while raw and grimy enough to deliver some serious heaviness. It is a dark, challenging and difficult album. Fascinating and strikingly weird; it is one hell of a head-trip, man.
Swans fans would be well-advised to check this beauty out. Hell, by the standards of that fearless band, this disc is actually pretty accessible (closer to 'The Great Annihilator' than 'Soundtracks for the Blind').
Note, all that has gone before refers to the European release of 'MahaKali' (on the Season of Mist label). There is a North American version (via The End Records), with a slightly different track-list. I think the above applies pretty well to both releases, in spite of these variations.
To be filed under...erm: ritual neo-classical, apocalyptic folk, tribal, world music, drone, dark ambient, experimental electronica, blues, choral, post-metal. Enjoy.
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