Mescalinaeden/Eventless Plot: October/Artificial Embrace
Gracetone

Thessaloniki, Greece-based label Gracetone's inaugural outing is an attractively packaged 7-inch 'single' split between Mescalinaeden (Luca Robba, former drummer for bands in Italy and London and now producing electro-acoustic music) and Eventless Plot, a four-piece group making its recording debut.

Created entirely on a 4-track analogue tape recorder, Mescalinaeden's “October” awakens from its sniffling slumber by a haunted parade of lockstep clatter and spiraling loops and nightmarish creatures shouting boisterously from the sidelines. Even more harrowing, Eventless Plot's “Artificial Embrace” emerges blanketed in fog, with somber horn tones and then electric bass gradually piercing it before stabbing guitars and decapitating breaks annihilate the powerless denizens. Both pieces are strong exercises in dramatic soundscaping that are over too soon. Of course you won't hear these pieces on your local 'Top 40' in this lifetime or any other for that matter but thankfully the 'single' concept is currently broad enough to accommodate scarred landscapes of destroyed ruins too.

January 2006