Charming, hazy new four-songs-plus-a-drone EP from Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya on The Flenser. I was familiar with the former artist but not the latter; this is very much along the lines of Midwife’s previous work and I’ll be checking out Melinkolya’s after her contribution to this release, comprising dreamy reflective sombre songs, surprisingly chunky shoegaze riffs, and drifting ambience.
Orbweaving starts with ‘Miss America’, a gentle wisp of a song with calm arpeggios underpinning Midwife’s trademark fuzzed hushed vocals. I think (live at least) they’re done through an old telephone as a microphone, creating a sense of nostalgic intimacy, not in directness but through mediation of the phone receiver. Anyway, here they deliver a drifting introspective kind of atmosphere… having been a teenager in the 90s, the title couldn’t help but remind me of the Hole track ‘Miss World’, and although obviously sounding very different, the lyrics have a similar vague bite to them.
‘Hounds of Heaven’ has a great driving feel, while the catchy if odd title phrase repeats “the hounds of heaven run like hell”; it’s a great laidback track that combines shimmery veils of melodic fuzz with a surprisingly heavy groove. More of an ear-opener is the lurch into more noisy territory that occurs halfway into ‘NMP’, the track having initially set out as a contemplative drifter. More surprising still is how even the (at times quite stinging) distortion is completely seamlessly worked into the overall haze of melancholic reflection. ‘Plague X’ has a looping, cyclical feel, draped again in the sonic equivalent of heavy curtains of warm but slightly itchy fabric, before the harder to write about but no less impressive title track. The twelve-minute drone piece that finishes the record is so delicately constructed you almost want to hold your breath, a self-contained but detached world unto itself, like a room that no-one’s been into for years.
From painkiller jams to gentle quietness, Orbweaving is a great demonstration of the range but also the specific atmosphere conjured by these artists.
