When I wrote about ‘Drummon’, Daniel Foggin’ s first outing for Rocket Recordings, I remarked on many things that took me away on a trip with this superbly transcendent recording. I described it as “a ying/ yang of sacred and profane… a lovely balance of the rational and non-rational… an interstitial space into which exist and encounter oneself”. When I read this back, and before I started listening to ‘Genog’ again… I wondered whether this was rather overstating the mark… however, it appears to be spot on… something which is also the case for this follow-up, also on Rocket.

I once again find that there is something quite ineffable about this music… and coming straight back to it from cold I immediately find myself if some sort of other-worldly happy place. I don’t know whether it is just the right level of repetition, of just the right intonation… or whatever… all I know it that it seems to match a rhythm and cadence that I very much feel at one with… both in mind and body.

What I have also found with this album, as with Foggin’s previous work, is that this is very much an experience where repeated listens peel back the layers of music to reveal something new and, in some cases, quite unexpected. For me early listen to ‘Genog’ brought out the more folk/ pastoral elements of Smote’s sound… that earthiness that seems to seep through this music… but, perhaps counterintuitively, it’s only after a few listens when the real heaviness comes through… with the two coexisting rather wonderfully once you get your head around it.

The album opens with the title-track which, in many ways, gives little away about how the set might proceed. There is a background drone which is set-off against bucolic acoustic sounds… which then really take off through a crescendo into a lovely lilting melody… I found myself transfixed by the repeating patterns, as if being drawn into a dark and mysterious/ mystical wood… highlighting my aforementioned thoughts on this music providing that interstitial space between the sacred and profane… something which is further augmented by the addition of chanting. This is a great way into the album… with the heavy element at the back of the mix it guides you into its centre and places you right where you need to be for the trip ahead…

After that ‘Hlaf’ continues at a similar sort of level… this is one in which the music somehow feels timeless… not in terms of genre, but in the way that there is an primordial quality to it… resonating with the ancient forest that one finds oneself in. Once again it is the relationship with the repetition and the swirls of, in this case, flute, which I just find to be perfectly pitched…

‘Fenhop’ starts in a spare and rather sinister manner… we seem to have reached a clearing where all manner of activity is taking place. There’s a sense of uncertainty in the air as we get our bearings… wherever it is it feels somehow strange yet seductive. A rising drone gives a sense of foreboding before finishing… it’s almost like an interlude, a pause for breath… albeit a five minutes long one…

…and a set up for the supremely wonderful ‘Lof’ with is immediate locked-in rhythm and heavy fuzzed-out guitar… this is is another of those tracks which is in one sense heavy, but has a lightness of touch to it as well… but in a manner that compliments each side. This is a track that is very much veering into stoner/ doom territory while very much still being rooted in that earthiness that transcends this whole album… in the modern parlance “Träd Gräs och Stenar x Om”… and what’s not to like about that mash up.

But the best is very much saved for the last, and ‘Banhus’ is an absolute banger… one of my tracks of the year so far… starting relatively slowly, this ten-minute plus behemoth starts building from the word go and just continues in that vein… but it really is the journey rather than the destination that is important here with lots of wonderful fills happening along the way… you think it’s going to explode at any moment, but it just keeps on going… the band keeping it right on the edge… so exciting and suspenseful… until it tails off and takes you back down into your own reality, although not before a re-entry of noise that just finishes the track, and album, off nicely.

This is the third Smote album that I’ve now heard and revelled in (there’s also ‘Bodkin’ which came out on The Weird Beard)… each has had it’s own atmosphere, that I have not only been happy to experience, but also really live through… this was further enhanced through seeing that band live recently, taking the music to a new level for me… just perfect!

‘Genog’ is out now on Rocket Recordings.

-o0o-

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