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Recording:
  All Was Carbon
 
 
Artist:
  Venusian Motel Guests
 
 
Label:
  self-released  
 
Release Date:
  22.April.2024  
 
Reviewed by:
  PostLibyan  
         
 
Rating:
   
         
 
Review:
 

The most pressing question i have about this band name is: is it about guests at a Venusian Motel (a motel on Venus, or just one run by ethnic Venusians) or are the motel guests from Venus? The name is very unclear as to which word is the noun and which of the other two are adjectives, and this bothers me.

Well, only a little. And i suppose that it's not really too important. Anyway, the band is a duo of Mike Skagerlind and Chris Romero, both of whom are credited with guitar and synths, Romero also adding percussion and bass. Romero is apparently on loan from ambient drone act Numün.

There are four tracks here, clocking in at about 17 minutes. Opening track Metrosands starts off with a vocal trill that sounds Arabic to me, not the call to prayer but a female voice with a different sound. To this they add guitar, clear and sparse. There is a vocal sample and some other sounds layered in that give this a faintly industrial feel, almost like a sparse ambient remix of Front 242.

Title track All Was Carbon starts with rumbling noises before the guitar comes in. The guitar is in layers including really some nice picking, sparse and reverberating against whooshing, spacey synths. The whole song ends with a roar, seemingly of space, or winds over emptiness.

The longest track here is A Future Survey of the Great Inundation which just barely stretches past the seven minute mark. Tt starts with rumbling sounds and a church bell in the distance. There is also a crinkling sound off to the rear right on my headphones. Every time i listen to this at the office, i wonder if the girl sitting in the cubicle behind me is rustling a bag of chips or something -- the sound seems half heard like that. But the song rumbles along, guitar added in slowly over ominous drones.

And finally we end with The Re-entry of Embers. This is a nice and more of a song than the ambient meanderings that make up the rest of the EP. There is a nice guitar layer, a clattering guitar, and some chugging percussion. It reminds me of Durutti Column.

This is an odd little EP by an odd act with a funny little name. But they are doing some nice stuff, interesting and a little different.

 
         
 
Related Links:
 

https://venusianmotelguests.bandcamp.com/album/all-was-carbon

 
         

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