Best of 2020
Missed this one first time around as it was released right in the middle of lockdown and i was only notified of its existence last week when picking up the Komare album from Penultimate Press. I'm grateful because although it's never too late to become attuned to music this brilliant, there is something imbued within God Bless the Death Drive that feels concomitant with the spirit of the times... and it's not just written in that title.
The London-based three-piece (of course) are of pan-global origin, and there's an obviously deliberately broadened worldview that underpins their music, fluidly assembled from the sonically disparate elements of post-industrial clatter, volksmusik melodicism, the freedom of improv and odd discipline of noise rock, and a fourth world otherness that coalesce so as to feel a lot more closely connected than you might initially realise. More still, like with Mosquitoes (and This Heat before them), there's a sense with Triple Negative that they're purposefully inverting discipline and form, like hearing the Dead C recite Organic Music Society from memory. The recording itself is oddly submerged, a radio preset not fully locked-in or an idea from next door heard through the wall, which seems perfectly suited (by accident or design!) for the sprawling, disorientating experience of the music- distortion, noise, lo-fidelity, static as instruments in themselves, loose, confusing, hard to fully get at. A fitting soundtrack for uncertain times.
