This recommendation comes straight from our Friend from the Crowds, Théophile Antolinos, guitarist and co-founder of BRUIT ≤.
We connected with Théophile over Instagram after photographing BRUIT ≤ live earlier this year. When we asked him for an album he would recommend, he sent us Minor Light by Australian band Fourteen Nights at Sea.
“Here is a special album for me from this Australian band called Fourteen nights at sea. It’s a cornerstone of the “Doomgaze” subgenre and a big inspiration for Clément and I when we write music for Bruit.”
We heard the connection immediately.
Minor Light has the huge reverbs, repeated guitars, drones and musical noise that sit close to the essence of BRUIT ≤. It helped us understand a little more about where Théophile and Clément come from as writers. BRUIT ≤ pushed those sounds towards protest, giving their music a clearer subject and something to stand against. On this record, Fourteen Nights at Sea leave the story buried.
Released in 2015, Minor Light is the Melbourne band’s third album. There are five tracks, although we stopped experiencing them as separate pieces quite quickly. For us, together, they describe a place.
A long field in black and white. Something has happened there. The land has a history, and the music gives us just enough to feel it without explaining any of it. We would rather not know. Finding out would probably make the place less interesting.
The album stays inside this atmosphere for almost forty minutes. Guitars repeat through extremely long reverbs while drones hang around them. Some sounds appear close enough to touch; others feel as if they are coming from somewhere across the field. Noise carries as much information as melody.
We expected bigger changes at first. Post-rock often teaches us to wait for the climb and the enormous release at the end. Fourteen Nights at Sea are less generous with that feeling. “Teeth Marks” lands at full weight almost immediately. Even the title track, which some reviews treat as an interlude, belongs to the same walk through the fog. We never felt that the album had stopped or changed direction. We had simply moved a little further into it.
There are no corners to turn in this field. Every time it seems that the fog might end, there is more behind it. The atmosphere stays with you because the band refuses to reveal what is waiting on the other side.
It is a dark place, but we are only visiting and that makes a difference. Spending forty minutes there feels intriguing. Living there would be another story.
Minor Light does require the right headspace. Anyone going in for the decisive climaxes of MONO, We Lost the Sea or BRUIT ≤ may spend the album waiting for something that Fourteen Nights at Sea have no interest in providing.
Listen when you have enough time to stay with one feeling and see how far you dare to take it.
Listen where you listen:
