- I don’t know quite how much spectral gating is in Spectral Gates debut, self-titled full-length, but one obvious thing I can say: there can’t be many Digital Audio Workstation plug-ins that are more primed to be turned into band names.
It’s not an effect that I’m familiar with, but it turns sounds mega-lo-fi and can send a psychedelic wave, phasing across your once stock-standard recording. It also sounds like the beginning of a fateful trip down the River Styx (the name, not the effect), so, I’m down with it. The sepulchral boatmen that make-up the band are Sydneysiders Steve Allison aka Scruffamudda and Daniel Arena who most recently saddled himself with the epic title Daniel Arena's Musical Entertainment Cube. It’s easy to hear the affinity the pair share, combining long careers in DIY electronic percussion and synth sounds, but they also bring some contrasts which play out across their record.
Scruffamudda is an interesting project, packing relentlessly DIY, homemade instrumentation into music that is always experimental, sometimes verging on the industrial, all in the service of the big, bearded bloke rapping and singing his heart out about his favourite political issues. His style, curiously, is one I associate with experimental female artists, like much of the work of Pikelet. Also his rapping is sooo white, both in its preoccupations and performance - definitely an acquired taste, so it may be a blessing for some (I didn't necessarily say me) that Spectral Gates is a purely instrumental outing.
It seems like Scruffamudda is the engine-room for Spectral Gates, bringing the drums and a loop pedal and, from what I hear of his previous work, favouring a harder, sweatier approach. What I’ve heard of Daniel Arena’s material is more ethereal and synth driven, sometimes dipping into ambient territory, but more often into a tuneful, if experimental electro-pop and sometimes, leaning into the smoothly revolving sounds of an easy-going krautrock. Having said that, he does shred a very distorted guitar across chunks of this debut, surely informing the ‘post-rock’ elements of what the pair are doing here.
Apparently, Spectral Gates went into the studio blind, with very few plans or preconceptions about what they were going to make. The results are a very cosmopolitan fusion that they label mostly post-rock and dub. While you’ll find plenty of that here, I think Arena’s penchant for krautrock is also a significant component, one that only starts to poke its nose in when you reach more synth-driven tracks.
As an improv record, there are few weak patches that could have been slightly stronger, but, given the circumstances in which it was created, you could equally argue that it’s a surprisingly strong effort. We take a visit to the zoo / aquariam at the end of the record with cuts titled sunfish and dromedary. I don’t know why they’re titled that way, but dromedary, which also features the most conspicuous spectral gating on the record, contributing to a really great drum sound, is also my favourite track on the album. It’s like the apotheosis of what they wanted to achieve: a slow post-rock build with snarling guitar and buzzing synth piling in ever more heavily across the runtime.
I don’t know if this is a one-off for these unexpected studio buddies, but given the strong response in their homestate, hopefully there’ll be more than just one outing and next time it’ll get some national promotion. Hell, when you can knock it out in the studio in one day with little-to-no prior preparation why wouldn’t you go again? At the risk of diminishing Spectral Gates' talent and experience, it’s like this post-kraut-electro-pop-instrumental-rock just plays itself.
- Chris Cobcroft.