Written by Ruud Peters
Take a look at the cover of this album and you will immediately understand that this album is the DIY product of a very creative musician.
This guy, strapped with cables and other stuff probably used in the making of this album, is Cardiff-based Matt Strangis who debuts with his album Square Peg In A Square Hole which in fact marks the start of Firewheelbombfire. Written and recorded in his home dungeon with absolutely no budget Matt takes us on a very expressive journey through an unsettling and desolate world.
Besides his home made laboratorium kit consisting of percussion, guitar, cymbals, snares he also used several borrowed instruments like piano and even other noise enabling pieces and bits you can find around the house.
Matt already showed his skills in many, hazy, guitar-based bands and even produced drum&bass and dubsteb under his other moniker ‘Billy Gone Bad’, but this one is definitely something else.
However, if you listen closely the mentioned influences can be traced back on this, sometimes, freaky aural experiment.
SPIASH meanders from dark ambient to post- & stonerrock and stirs in a broad pallet of discordant and enticing sounds. The ultimate soundtrack for imaginative dark landscapes and surreal disturbing stories.
Let’s go through the different stages in this journey.
‘Doggone’, the album’s opener, starts like an oncoming train approaching from a tunnel but its passage is suddenly disrupted by acoustic guitars and vocal humming.
The instrumental track develops towards typical post-rock with electric guitars but at the end, by the sound of distorted ringtones of a railway crossing, we are again warned for the passage of the train - or maybe for the rest of the trip ?
‘Get Out Much?’ with its dark restrained vocals, hypnotic ticking sounds and heavy guitars sucks you into a mystic world and that will happen more and more in the album. It somehow reminds me of the Saviour album by Antimatter.
‘Francis’ is a bleak, melancholic tune with distant noise and a spooky piano from an old gramophone. The fragile vocals seem the tell the story of a broken man. The created atmosphere echoes David Lynch’s masterpiece Eraser.
After these sinister and desolate songs it’s time for ‘Carry On Carrie’ an uplifted, delighted track with rousing guitars, heavy metallic riffing but also with an awe inspiring twist at the end when it seems that your ears have been drenched in some kind of weird fluid. In the distance you hear distorted voices slowly fading away.
Back to the surreal Lynchian atmosphere then with ‘Telephone Voice (On/Off)’, an almost waltzing conversation between two persons (or is it just one person with a double personality ?) featuring the warped voice (Telephone On) and the ‘normal’ voice (Telephone Off).
‘Trodite’ is an instrumental piece leaning heavily on electronic loops and takes you a little out of the mud but not for long as the next traumatic experience is upon you.
Just like ‘Get Out Much?’ the dark electronic sounds and heavy ominous bass lines on ‘Pissing Guild’ take you into a nightmarish run through hidden corridors, lost in a maze underground. The perpetual anguish sinks into a deep hole at the end, but suddenly you’re awake again: ‘Polypoly’ floats on a bed of acoustic guitars and Indian sitar-like sound, very spiritual. In fact, it easily suggests that your spirit has detached itself from the body. Floating high in the air you can see a vast, burned landscape below you.
In ‘September’ the electronic and dub background from the creator comes to the surface. The mood changes again as the repetitive beats evoke a more delighted rush. Matt sings on this one as well.
The final track ‘It Ran And Ran And Ran slants back to the weird and harsh worlds we have explored earlier, blending aggressive metalriffs, stoner-rock and industrial elements. The pace finally slows down with some Black Sabbath-like doom and ultimately fades away in noisy feedback. It leaves you in a perplexed, puzzled state but for listeners with an open mind (like myself) it also entices you to re-experience the whole journey again.
Bottomline: Firewheelbombfire (a.k.a Matt Strangis) delivers an intriguing piece of work that will definitely suit everyone eager to seek the bounderies in music.
