Feral Myths is the latest solo album by Martin Bisi, who I know more for his legendary production work with everyone from Swans to Cop Shoot Cop etc, than for his own albums, that he's been releasing since SST put out Creole Mass in 1988. For this work he has used a core of disparate musicians and vocalists including Genevieve Fernworthy, Oliver Rivera Drew, Diego Ferri and Dave Miller. This album will reveal more of itself with each listen as you'll notice different textures and cadences, hear different parts of the vocals revealing something of the claustrophobic nature of our times.
The album opens with oscillating noises, a steady drum beat with semi buried vocals on The Octave Bridge, that sounds like two or three vocalists are sparring with each other, to emerge from the layers and layers of post punk soundscape.
A Storm Called Ida slowly leads you into the storm raved wake of Ida when she hit Brooklyn, while sounding like a more guitar-based Strings Of Consciousness, as dodgy land deals happen, people pick up the pieces of shattered lives, Sara Fantry's operatic backing vocals have shades of Malcolm McLaren Madame Butterfly but with pots and pans percussion accenting this song of surviving the storm.
Silver Guardians has a dense orchestral feel, like Foetus and Lydia Lunch's York Symphony, in its layers of intensity, but with disembodied vocals weaving around the Theremin as the backing choir are a bleak textural element.
Mystery Of The Skin Suit is a cataclysmic sounding, multi voiced, slightly paranoid, filmic tale of why you might want a Skin Suit to hide behind or disappear within the doomy synths, buzzing sounds as voices seep out of the walls, trying to eradicate your mind.
Avian Invasions has the operatic vocals of Amanda White set against, what I assume is Martin's narration, on a field of sounds ululating like beating wings of the invading birds, this shares a sensibility with Chris Cutler, Lutz Glandien and Dagmar Krause's seminal Domestic Stories shot through several different prisms.
The Brains Riddle has dense foggy guitars, bass and sheet metal percussion, as the distressed vocals try to make sense of everything going on, both in his brain and the miasma he is floating through, with Arabic pipes, as this pulses into the madness within, sawing against the string's schizoid intent.
Proud Boy 2 Way Mirror is distressed, as distressing as a song about the Proud Boys ought to be, questioning vocals buried in the voids in the music, as the vocals sound like you might want to institutionalize them, as the swirling furious music seeks to destroy from within that Two Way Mirror, revealing the Proud Boys true evil intent.
Esther Wins Again reworks the biblical story casting Trump as Hayman and Stormy Daniels as Esther on a very Re-Search/Recommended records sounding strings swirling dense journey into the twisting of History, herstory, your story and my story through the distortions, to reveal new truths as voices babble in your brain.
The album closes with The Great Trap In The Creek that opens like a Manorexia tune, but with operatic vocals and shifting patterns of sound bringing an air of disquiet, discomfort being distilled into your inner mind, unleashing who knows what, that emerges from deep inside The Great Trap. These voices swirling in your head, sending out messages of hope for positive change and renewal, rather than the sinister intent suggested musically.
Find out more at https://martin-bisi.bandcamp.com/album/feral-myths https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063650613295
