Your blood and soil are piss and shit…
...is one way to start a review. It’s also the name of the shortest
and most ‘everyday metal’ song on this album from last year which is
so far removed from most blah music that I’m tempted to pepper this
review with years-old clichés to redress the balance. Adam Kalmbach,
the sole (and indeed only) member of Jute Gyte, uses relatively
straight-forward structures, a few wonky time signatures, well judged
dynamics and aggressive but not overpowering production to give the
album an easy enough, familiar enough feel. And he plays a microtonal
guitar all over the place to make everything sound fucked.
 |
| Ressentiment, by Jute Gyte. |
The opening riff on ‘Mansions of fear, mansions of pain’ seems to
descend again and again and again (and maybe again, I’m not counting)
through all the notes on a regular instrument and all the extra ones
on the microtonal strings of savagery that you feel like you’re being
pulled by a newly annoyed gravity.
‘Oh Soft Embalmer of the Still Midnight’ initially sounds like My
Bloody Valentine if Kevin Shields was as obsessed with nightmares as
he is with staying out of public view for years at a time. Some of the
slower parts of the song remind me of the time a lad knocked me out
one night. Falling slowly, dizzy, drunk and expertly attired, I must
have been a vision of bearded and beered up serenity until I hit the
pavement and the discord takes my head hostage again. Does it hurt?
Not too much. Will everyone be into it? Not at all.
You know those Dali paintings where all the animals have mad big
gangly legs like they’re two hundred feet tall? If one of them died in
the desert and a wandering wander or wayfaring wayfarer found it’s
putrefied, mile-long camel dick and tried to replicate the sight and
smell as sound, the first riff on the third track ‘The Central Fires
of Secret Memory’ might do the job. Eight minutes or so later (still
the same song obvs), not for the first time, the album goes all slow
and horrory. It’s higher pitched now though and a bit jumpy. The drum
machine gets a nice workout too.
‘Like the Deepening of Frost in the Slow Night’ kicks in full hooly-do
for about forty seconds before going all headbangy and then all
headswirly. Chopping and swapping tempos and junk for fun at this
stage. I’d like to be able to say whether or not he’s changing key but
he’s possibly using all the notes at every opportunity so who the
fartz can really be sure? It’s quite the thrill-ride of a tune if I’m
honest.
Closing track ‘The Grey King’ is about those sex books that everyone
read that time mayhaps.
Or not.
I can’t hardly understand a word he says. I’m not sure the songs are
even about what young Kalmbach thinks they’re about. I don’t even know
for certain if Kalmbach is young. Or fully human. He’s giving us a
guided tour of some other dimension or whathaveyou and I fucking love
the place. The next time I’m babysitting and they ask to stay up ‘juss
fornudder ten minnets’ I think I’ll allow it. Might even let them
Bobby Harnett
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