REVIEW: Anakrid, FeverDreamFever, Stereonucleosis

Posted September 3rd, 2008 by eric

Inarguably, Anakrid’s music is inherently uneasy on the ears, but that shouldn’t completely scare you away, if you’re ever even slightly intrigued by what’s behind the other, less welcoming door. Anakrid’s so-called “difficult” musical canvas is an acquired taste to be sure, but it’s worth adjusting the tuning in your musical ear to appreciate the premeditated aural deconstruction that awaits.

FeverDreamFever is Anakrid’s first LP of 2008; if you’ve been paying attention, that’s a grinding pace compared to last year’s flurry of limited selections, all of which were housed in fetishistic hand-made packaging. This one is a batch of only 200 released by Chris Bickel’s own Stereonucleosis label. Returning to a drone-heavy atmosphere after the brutal Pos Load: Nihilsurrealisme, FeverDreamFever proffers a slightly less organic collage of sound delivered in pithy bursts of distant clanging wreckage, whereby electronic manipulation seems to have taken over Bickel’s found-sound approach.

If the first side of this LP doesn’t make you look under your bed before going to sleep, the second half will assure as much. The layered drone gives way to tribal percussion and an unforgiving malaise. This is the soundtrack to the dream that wakes you in a cold sweat. This is exquisitely stylish doom.

Tags: album-review