music to code to, #2: Blame and sounds of water
Depending upon the very mood, I am into different kinds of music throughout my (working) days, and for quite a while, all kinds of electronic stuff has been close to top my my list, including both a couple of more familiar names and stuff which might be considered pretty much “unknown” these days, for whichever reasons. Blame definitely belongs to the latter kind of artists on my list, a band/project I just discovered a couple of weeks ago and have been excessively listening to ever since. Based in Belgrad, Serbia, Blame so far has released two albums (“Water” and “Convergent Fields), both digitally available via the projects bandcamp.com page and (at least “Water”) as CD release as well.
I don’t think there’s really much needed to write about either of the two albums: Somehow, Blame mastermind Boris Posavec manages to find his musical way somewhere amidst Covenant (especially the “Sequencer” album), Angels And Agony, at times later Dust Of Basement releases and maybe a couple of other musicians in between dark electro, “future pop”, with an emphasis on “future” not “pop”, and the kind of music they have been selling us as “ebm” in the early 2000s. Down that road, Blame is pretty good at finding the right balance – creating dark, futuristic “soundscapes” which are accessible yet inspired, intense and strong without being overly aggressive or harsh (which goes for both the music and – male and female – vocals), musically somewhere near the artists mentioned above yet not just mere copies or clones of anything in existence, original throughout both albums yet filled with smaller pieces of reoccurring sounds, melodies, rhythms to create a certain musical identity amidst a genre which, these days, doesn’t really suffer from a lack of new album releases at least in quantity. All this is topped by a very strong production, an overall audio quality at least on par with some of todays major releases in this field of music.
Overally, both of the Blame albums are strongly recommended and, as far as I am concerned, one of the most interesting discoveries in this field of music in the last years. And, given the albums are freely available, checking out this music is almost mandatory if your musical collection and/or musical interests span any of the bands or genres mentioned earlier. Of course, though, you are encouraged to eventually buy them through bandcamp.com or any of the other sites offering CDs or MP3s – supporting great artists is more than ever of importance in days in which it seems the market still is being flooded with large amounts of low quality releases each and every month.
Recommended songs and links
- “Legions – Across these oceans” (off the “Water” album)
- “Waterside” (off the “Water” album)
- “Logical” (off the “Convergent fields” album)
- “Water” re-release @ ionium-records
- “Convergent Fields” announcement @ionium-records
- official Blame website