Ceremony // Safranin Sounds
"What sounds like The Jesus And The Mary Chain playing out of the right-hand speaker and Kraftwerk out of the left just becomes too much..."
Release Date: 30th July 2012 Ceremony – Safranin Sounds (No Emb Blanc)
I’ll admit I didn’t look very hard, but I couldn’t find much about Ceremony online. Apparently Safranin Sounds is their third album, but on the basis of this I probably won’t spend any more time tracking down their discography. The problems with the record don’t become apparent until a few tracks in. I’d actually say that the first couple are genuinely exciting; ‘Dull Life’ mixes some fine Robert Smith-esque drawl with complementary shoegaze guitars to devastating effect. ‘You Never Stay’ introduces industrial drum beats into the equation, and things still sound at least a little interesting through the indulgent ‘Never Love Again’. After the first ten minutes though, Ceremony make it pretty clear that they aren’t content with just referencing one resurgent genre at a time. Fuzzy shoegaze and elements of 80s electronica might work on the occasional track, but the record just goes on, and on, and on, for 20, yes, that’s right, 20, full length tracks. After a while having what sounds like The Jesus And The Mary Chain playing out of the right-hand speaker and Kraftwerk out of the left just becomes too much. The unfortunate thing is half the tracks are probably alright, but the energy you’d have to expend to find them makes you turn the record off. I gave it one more chance, dipped in halfway through track ten, Without Your Love, and found a brutal, nihilistic breakdown akin to Fuck Buttons or The Chapman Family’s more raucous moments. It’s a bizarre record.
5/10 - Alex Throssell
