It's not a stretch to say that Divide And Dissolve inhabit a very specific niche in Doom, with a sound you can only stray from so far without losing your identity. Or can you? Well, with the experience of having seen them perform at Roadburn last year and also owning their 2021 album "Gas Lit" I at least had pretty clear expectations of what I was going to hear on the duo's new work.
DIVIDE & DISSOLVE - Systemic (CD) (2023)
So lets check! Is the album rather short (a little over thirty minutes) and fully instrumental except for one track providing the backdrop for poetic narration by Minori Sanchiz-Fung? Yes, all true here too.
So what about the way they construct their tracks? Typically Divide And Dissolve start with atmospheric textures, made out of looped soprano saxophone and/or keyboards. Those then suddenly get crushed by droning Doom or dirty Noise Rocks riffs, while the loop still is around somewhere far in the background. The guitar tone is devastatingly crunchy, the interaction with the drums enormously heavy, but also quite loose in a chaotic, very primal way, which in its core is much more emotionally expressive than it even is Metal. And at some point, without a really concluding resolution... it just ends somehow. Sometimes that happens with, sometimes without the resurfacing of the initial loop.
It's an approach which technically looks much more like putting raw pieces together in a default scheme than applying actual songwriting. Which makes it all the more admirable how good this works. Remember: I'm still talking about the expectation based on the past. And yay, all that jazz applies again on "Systemic"!
So it's just another day at the office then? If it is than Black Native American Takiaya Reed and Maori Sylvie Nehill have surely established a productive and ambitious work atmosphere. They're doing all their weirdly specific things, but have refined them in all aspects.
The most obvious improvement to what was already great before are the loops, which seem to be more elaborated than before, especially regarding the more sophisticated saxophone arrangements. This part of the music is so strong that the whole album is confidently framed by the synthesizer introduction "Want" and the saxophone epilogue "Desire". So including the instrumental side of the sole vocal track "Kingdom Of Fear", which contains drums (yet also xylophone) and almost sounds like an Ambient score of modern day Swans, already a third of the album doesn't feature Metal guitars at all.
Following what I've already implied before I've only called the riffs Metal to negate that now and replace the term with Noise Rock - or at least add the Avant-Garde tag, because their impact is much closer to bands like Caspar Brötzmann Massaker or Insect Ark than to any pure Doom Metal doctrine.
With the juxtaposition of jazz-adjacent loops and quaking heaviness I could also imagine Divide And Dissolve's sound on this album to be a more raw and primitive version of an imaginary crossing between the solo works of Japanese American saxophone player Patrick Shiroishi and Sludge experimentalists Sumac.
So yeah, while this is neither perfect nor intented to be, it definitly is pretty great orignal stuff with an unexpectedly soulful core, which grows every time you listen to it. And given the short total playing time "Systemic" is of course an album which can easily be squeezed into most days' schedules. So I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how much I will love this several months from now.
So what about the way they construct their tracks? Typically Divide And Dissolve start with atmospheric textures, made out of looped soprano saxophone and/or keyboards. Those then suddenly get crushed by droning Doom or dirty Noise Rocks riffs, while the loop still is around somewhere far in the background. The guitar tone is devastatingly crunchy, the interaction with the drums enormously heavy, but also quite loose in a chaotic, very primal way, which in its core is much more emotionally expressive than it even is Metal. And at some point, without a really concluding resolution... it just ends somehow. Sometimes that happens with, sometimes without the resurfacing of the initial loop.
It's an approach which technically looks much more like putting raw pieces together in a default scheme than applying actual songwriting. Which makes it all the more admirable how good this works. Remember: I'm still talking about the expectation based on the past. And yay, all that jazz applies again on "Systemic"!
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| Divide & Dissolve live at Roadburn |
The most obvious improvement to what was already great before are the loops, which seem to be more elaborated than before, especially regarding the more sophisticated saxophone arrangements. This part of the music is so strong that the whole album is confidently framed by the synthesizer introduction "Want" and the saxophone epilogue "Desire". So including the instrumental side of the sole vocal track "Kingdom Of Fear", which contains drums (yet also xylophone) and almost sounds like an Ambient score of modern day Swans, already a third of the album doesn't feature Metal guitars at all.
Following what I've already implied before I've only called the riffs Metal to negate that now and replace the term with Noise Rock - or at least add the Avant-Garde tag, because their impact is much closer to bands like Caspar Brötzmann Massaker or Insect Ark than to any pure Doom Metal doctrine.
With the juxtaposition of jazz-adjacent loops and quaking heaviness I could also imagine Divide And Dissolve's sound on this album to be a more raw and primitive version of an imaginary crossing between the solo works of Japanese American saxophone player Patrick Shiroishi and Sludge experimentalists Sumac.
So yeah, while this is neither perfect nor intented to be, it definitly is pretty great orignal stuff with an unexpectedly soulful core, which grows every time you listen to it. And given the short total playing time "Systemic" is of course an album which can easily be squeezed into most days' schedules. So I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how much I will love this several months from now.
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