Big Brave + Aicher MAY 11th 2023

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BIG|BRAVE, the elemental ensemble of guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie, guitarist Mathieu Ball, and drummer Tasy Hudson, harness an earthen heaviness composed of distorted and textural drones,
austere bombast, and Wattie’s heart-rending voice. Like recent collaborators The Body, BIG|BRAVE is at the forefront of reconfiguring the landscape of heavy music. The trio brandish sparseness and
density like weapons, cast tense atmospheres with languid tempos and mutate feedback into eruptions of enveloping tempests. nature morte sharpens BIG|BRAVE’s ferocity and expansive sound into emotional elegies for the disenfranchised, wringing abstracted textures and pure fervence into songs of unfathomable mass.

The title nature morte is the French term for still life paintings whose literal translation is “dead nature.” BIG|BRAVE color the songs of nature morte with unease, creating an air of beauty in decay, chords suspended in contemplative stillness. Wattie’s experiences structuring lyrics and song forms on The Body & BIG|BRAVE’s Leaving None But Small Birds informed her work on nature morte, creating stories that, like many folk tales, are at once specific and universal. Wattie’s voice manages to be commanding and vulnerable with impressive range and intimacy. Even her gasps carve their way through the tidal crash of Ball’s distortion wail and the pummel of Hudson’s drums. “the fable of subjugation” conveys pain through strained drones free of time, an aching minimalism that withers slowly before bursting in an outright roar. nature morte is an excavation of dark inner chasms of feelings both ineffable and visceral. The album tackles the folly of hope, the consequences of trauma, often centers on the subjugation of femininity in all its pluralities. “It is violent and terrible. It is crushing and alarming. It is common and basic,” says Wattie. “It is catastrophic and disheartening.

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AICHER is the latest project of København-based musician Liam Andrews. Translating to sharp, fierce and bitter (of the wind), the alignment of this title is fitting.
Working within the atonal and monochromatic aesthetics he’s drawn to, the inclusion of place and the environmental influence of the bleak Scandinavian winters prove to be the perfect antidote. Eerie hollows of wind, solitude and the crushing of ice underfoot place the soundscape of the north into the brutalist path he is known for.

For the past two decades, Andrews has been active in exploring amplified guitar music with the industrial group MY DISCO, and as a recent collaborator with Karl O’Connor (Regis, Downwards Records) and Boris Wilsdorf (Einstürzende Neubauten) as EROS.
The works of AICHER focuses on repurposing the incidentals. Drawing on his catalogue of pre-existing recorded materials (electrified bass being the dominant instrument), the artist translates them into compositions of detailed feedback expression and low-end sound pressure.