Stefan Christensen — The Upcoming Flame (Bruit Direct)
Photo by Laurent Ourseau
Thirty years back, the sounds emanating from Xpressway records seemed like they were coming from someplace very, very far away. Sure, the Dead C, Gate, and Alastair Galbraith (amongst others) did their work in New Zealand’s South Island, which is distant from pretty much anywhere. But the hiss and grime of lo-fi recording seemed to coat the music with a patina, sort of like the grain of 19th century photography, which made the music seem even further removed. And if you happened to go to the place where the music went down, it turns out that it was quite removed from its time and environment. The architects of the Xpressway sound were strangers in their own land.
So, what does all this talk of old records from New Zealand have to do with Stefan Christensen, a New Englander who was probably in grade school when the Xpressway sound went down? There’s no denying that those records have marked him. The aggrieved, distorted voice and far-off, mechanical clank of “Like Factories” sounds like 1990s-vintage Gate; “Unkempt Power” staggers and thrashes like a Dead C single; “Time Elapse” radiates downer desolation quite like Alastair Galbraith’s. And each side of the LP ends with an unhurried, spot-on tribute to the isolationist bluesman Guitar Roberts (aka Loren Connors), who may have lived in Connecticut, but whose music expresses a remove from all that is known similar to the Xpressway crew’s.
But Christensen doesn’t just make music that sounds like the records he likes. He draws into his sources’ strengths and molds songs that are just as misshapen, stubborn, and undeniable. He plugs his jack into their ungrounded outlets and noises just as jagged and acrid smoke out of his amp. He sounds just as dismayed with the world around him as his inspirations did, and as the music spools it becomes apparent that he, like his sources, is standing on the outside of human industry, wishing he could escape and knowing that he can’t because he’s human, too. The Upcoming Flame mines a still-rich vein of ore. It could be that as long as the world of humans doesn’t make sense, music like this will.
Gaël Moissonnier & Simon Deterne / tiroir aux alouettes (de Schrödinger) enregistré live @Bruit direct_151113_Deep Inside http://phalaenia.bandcamp.com/album/bruit-direct
