Record of the year material from Chicago's Cancer House, a relatively new outfit that count Winged Wheel's Whitney Johnson amongst their personnel but otherwise come shrouded in a foggy mystery that seems purposefully reflective of their candlelit, tape hiss drenched slowcore song. The label offers up very little information outside of some testimony that suggests the four piece not only rarely record their endeavours, but seem to hold scant interest in such a practice. A little myth-making goes a long way when it comes to music of this kind - think Les Rallizes Denudes famed rejection of the studio, early Godpseed and their self-appointed base of Hotel2Tango, or even how April Magazine's romantically textured transmissions seem to make no concession to the wider mechanisms of the industry. Cancer House don't sound especially like those acts, but they are possessed of a similar allure, loosely psychedelic and dreamy, and perhaps adjacent to what we might understand as post-rock, but somehow a touch more spooky and unknowable. Comparisons to Hood, Flying Saucer Attack and Bark Psychosis won't lead you too wrong, though the Loren Connors-related groups Haunted House and San Agustin, and the likes of Grouper and Charalambides might provide a more accurate North American context. There's no great absence of this kind of anti-formalist lo-fi songwriting right now, but crucially Cancer House do it just that little better than near all others, masterfully in charge of texture, pacing and delivery. Of its kind, I think we'll have to go a long way to hear anything much better this year.
FFO: Haunted House, San Agustin, Hood, Bark Psychosis
