Hier Kommt Der Schwartze Mond

We Say...

Review by Mark Richardson

In 1998, an LP by a band identified as Valium Aggelein appeared on a precious few record store shelves. It came in a yellow sleeve adorned with a couple of small pictures on the front: a drum kit, a reel-to-reel tape machine, a shot of dark clouds stretched behind power lines. The record's German title, Hier Kommt der Schwartze Mond, translates as Here Comes the Black Moon. The vinyl was white, only 500 copies were pressed, and Hier Kommt never came out on CD. Needless to say, few people ever heard it.

Who was this band? One clue, in small print on the front, just under the title, gave it away: the names "J. Albertini / C. Amber / E. Parton" belonged to members of Duster, the trio, on Seattle's now sadly defunct Up Records, known for crawling, space-obsessed psychedelia. Valium Aggelein was a one-off project recorded during a fertile period for the band, when they had more ideas and songs than Up had interest or perhaps ability to issue.

Duster can be understood in terms of guitar-centered slowcore outfits like Galaxie 500 and Bedhead, but their approach was much looser, and their albums felt like collections of intriguing sketches rather than songs. Hier Kommt der Schwartze Mond amplifies this ramshackle quality, with pieces that seem like film cues, bereft of proper beginnings and endings. The opening title track seems to drift into view like a brightly lit spacecraft moving into a black, star-dotted frame. The drums sound recorded somewhere far off, three-note clusters from a tinkly Rhodes piano echo dub-style into the distance, and the guitar, rich with fuzzy overtones, intimates mystery, longing and a vague sense of dread.

It's not quite an instrumental album — a few tracks have vocals, whispered as though afraid to wake someone sleeping on the studio floor — but atmosphere is everything. The twangy guitar lead in "Die Wolken Werden Stufenleitern Absinken" (translation: "Ladders Dropping from the Clouds"), which occasionally breaks off into feedback that hints at whale songs, sounds like something that might be heard over the p.a. at the roadhouse in Twin Peaks. The recording is certainly lo-fi (tape hiss is virtually another instrument, and at one point a wailing police siren almost drowns out a song), but the texture of the guitars throughout is a small wonder, as the reverb and sustain conjure a vast imaginary space that belies the modest budget. The strumming during the opening of the brief "Feuerprobe/ Feuertaufen," for example, is so pillowy soft, warm, and organic you can't imagine it being created by a floppy plastic pick touching metal strings.

For fans of slow, dreamy space-rock that conjures a palpable headspace, this is certainly a lost classic. As far as the German, drummer Jason Albertini lived in Switzerland for a time and was fluent, and perhaps the band thought another cryptic layer suited the project. They may have been right. "Geburt Zum Tod In Zeitlupe" translates to "Birth to Death in Slow Motion" which neatly sketches out the landscape of this humble and rather magnificent little record.