- These days if you were to describe Blank Realm as a band “...with one foot in the rustic free improvisation mindset … and the other in a more ethereal, drugged space” (thankyou Mess+Noise), most of their fans would just say “what?” Yet circa 2010, as BR spilled off of smudgy CD-Rs and on to their first vinyl, Brisbane’s experimental pop darlings were a very different band.
It’s actually quite difficult to hunt down the weird old sounds of Blank Realm, even that vinyl of Heatless Ark -representing something like a culmination of their early oddity- is frustratingly difficult to find a soundcloud stream of. If you’re set on an early Realm emulator though, it’s a bit of a coincidence how well those old descriptions fit their latest LP, Last Seen.
About three years on from the much lauded Illegals In Heaven the listening public would certainly have been entitled to expect some more sweet, leftfield tunes. Well leftfield they are, but sweet is probably not the first adjective you’d reach for. Pretty bloody interesting though and quite diverse into the bargain, so much so that it’s difficult to know where to start.
It’s easy enough to say that varying levels of psychedelia are leaking out of most things here and that’s very obvious from the slow, nearly shapeless swelling of album opener Smokeart Stargate. Haunting harmonies in the vocals, guitars and synth bubble like an out-of-control home chemistry set, over the top of each other, threatening to but not actually quite derailing the album just as it gets going.
I feel much less ambivalent about The Greener The Slime The Steeper The Climb, which crackles and seethes before the very Ben Frost synths carry us into an ambient-industrial dystopia that climaxes with a snatch of howling guitar. It’s more like doom than pop and a large section of Blank Realm fans may be heading for the bar at this point, but I love it.
They might be stirring the pot, but the band still know the value of three minutes of radio friendliness and cuts like Lethal Prayer or Speedboat On A River Of Blood just about qualify. The former serves up pounding electro beats and hissed, unintelligible but spine-tingling vocals before it all begins to mutate, unexpectedly, into something friendlier and more like a traditional pop-rock song. The latter song is propelled by a banging synth riff and a soaring lead line and is one step away from being a closing credits soundtrack to an ‘80’s action show. In the context of Last Seen it’s both a hilarious contrast and just a delight in and of itself.
I very often find myself returning to Fabulous Diamonds as a reference point for this kind of psych murk and I never feel that more strongly than on the nearly eponymous Last Scene: with its semi-lucid female vocalise, ominous guitar rumblings and echoing drums. The reverb sloshes everything together into some kind of weird harmonic run-off and I have no idea at all why it was chosen as an actual single.
It does snap together quite neatly with the other atmospheric fragments however, which are still mutating through styles. The most significant remaining one has to be the ten minute slab of ambience that is Revanche. The sparkling, undulating soundscape would be pleasant enough but the band go the extra mile and throw in a dance beat halfway through giving the whole thing a vibe lurking somewhere between Jon Hopkins, Peaking Lights and Moon Duo.
A decade ago there were a whole bunch of bands making sounds like this and as weirdly, unapproachably stylish as it was Blank Realm astutely got out of that sound before the scene imploded. Given the burst of nostalgic warmth I’ve experienced on their return to these old haunts, I’d say they’ve just as shrewdly picked an excellent time to return. I can’t imagine it will shift a huge number of units, but, hand-crafted album covers and all, I hardly think it was intended to. Whoever else it was intended for, to me Last Seen is a gift.
- Chris Cobcroft.