Witching Waves
Fear Of Falling Down
December 8 2014 (Soft Power Records)
5/10
Words: Richard O’Hagan
Listening to London’s Witching Waves is a bit like having a massage. Not a nice, gentle rub-down with a light Norwegian kind of massage, though. Oh no. More of a brutal, deep muscle pummelling performed by a gnarled midget with an anger management problem whose last pay packet was a fiver or two light.
It is, in short, an uncomfortable experience. Emma Wigham and Mark Jasper have a take on music that is angular and challenging. The production on this record is so sparse, it is almost not there at all. This makes every track sound extremely raw, yet somehow not powerful, a paper cut rather than the Black Knight’s flesh wound.
The outcome of this ‘less is more’ approach is that you’re actually left wanting a little more focus. Oddly disarming harmonies are all very well, but when they lead to nine tracks that all sound so similar, you wish that one or two of them had been given a little more polish, if only by way of a contrast and to show a little more of what this undoubtedly talented and interesting duo can do.
And yet that is why this album is so much like that massage. It wasn’t necessarily the most pleasurable or easy going time. But not long afterwards I started to feel a lot better for the experience.
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