A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

electro-inflected nu-gaze with identical twin sister vocalists singing in unison: there can't be many of these about.

Take the guitarist/vocalist and the keyboardist/vocalist from On! Air! Library! and the guitarist/soundscapist from Secret Machines, mix it all up together with lots of atmospheric textures and spooky Throwing Muses-esque vocal harmonies and A Sunny Day In Glasgow style cut and paste glitchiness, and you might just have my favourite album of 2008. (Tied with Fantasy Black Channel but that's another thread.)

Express your love here, rather than cluttering up the End of 2008 thread!

i've only listened to the album once but i really love the opening track and 'prince of peace' especially: i like when their vocals go into ring chants and mantras

Sorry, should have cut and pasted the whole quote... something about autotune... there's only one song where they're deliberately caning the autotune, and I do actually love it because the Deheza twins are actually naturally such amazing harmonists that they don't need it - it's just for funs, obviously.

They don't always sing in unison... I love the way their voices weave in and out. To this day, I still can't tell who's singing what, even after seeing them live. I think Claudia tends to do the lower bits and Ally does the higher bits, but I could be wrong. What I love best is when they sing in unison for most of the phrase, then suddenly just... branch out into these shimmering vocal pyrotechnics as the song opens up, their voices slide in and out of one another, and then they go back to these incredibly close harmonies again.

It's really quite breath-taking.

I can never remember the names of the damn songs!

I know I love Connjur and Chain... and yeah, Prince of Peace...

That song with the autotune/vocoder riff always gets stuck in my head. "I can't seem to remember my dreams... lately..." I love their phrasing on it.

And the production on this album is just so.... when I first heard it, I thought it was really quite minimal compared to the demos I'd had. But the more I listen to it, the more I notice how perfect and wonderful it is. It manages to be both baroque and yet also quite restrained at the same time. Lovely.

I am so forgetful - it's Chain I'm thinking of up there ^^^^

That song with the autotune/vocoder riff always gets stuck in my head. "I can't seem to remember my dreams... lately..." I love their phrasing on it.

their catchy stuff like this is awesome and infectious, i've been hearing this one for days in my head now

chain and iamundernodisguise for me

I keep meaning to check this out, everything I have read about them makes them sound awesome.

Matt, you would like it, I think.

Would it be totally arrogant to say that I would heartily recommend it to any fans of early Shimura Curves? It's very much in the same sonic space. I mean, two years ago, when I first met Benjamin Curtis, and we exchanged demo CDs, he was playing in a prog band, and I was in a nu-gaze electro band with two harmony-singing sisters. Two years later, he's in a nu-gaze electro band with two harmony-singing sisters. COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^ kidding! Totally kidding, before anyone rips me a new asshole.

haha shimura curves were the VERY first thing which came to mind when i heard this

the way the melody of 'connjur' resolves itself is so gorgeous btw

Quite like this. I checked out their tracks on MySpace/YouTube after hearing them a lot on Gideon Coe and other 6Music shows a couple of months ago. Haven't bought the album yet though lol.

The Robin Guthrie remix of My Cabal is good too, but I prefer the original. That and Iamnodisguise

I love all of A Sunny Day In Glasgow's stuff, but it's taking me longer to get into SO7B.

I've not totally fallen for the whole of this album just yet, but I'm a huge sucker for the straight-up swoony stuff. Half Asleep is getting played so much, such a perfect chorus, loving those backwards cymbals. Something sort of japanese about the melody too, isn't there?

I was going to start this thread a few days ago. I love the orderliness of the singing and how much of the music is sort of clean and bright-sounding. To actually pull that off for an entire album is pretty impressive (see also the last Mahogany album which I love for the same reason). That melody in "Chain" has been stuck in my head more than anything else this year.

Yeah, as much as I like the Robin Guthrie My Cabal, the original is kind of... bouncier. (The demo is, of course, the best of all - but I would say that.)

The vocal riff to Prince of Peace really encapsulates everything I love about the way the harmonies work - they sing really really close together on the verse, and then on the chorus, as the music widens and becomes more... intense, the vocals fan out and break from unison into harmony and it's the best thing ever.

Yeah, I totally hear the Mahogany thing. The other obvious comparison is Asobi Seksu, I think - but kind of less *rock* than Asobi and more electronica.

It makes me a bit sad, because this is very much what Shimura Curves second album would have sounded like had the band not imploded. But hey! It means I can be lazy and listen to this instead. Heh.

this album is wonderful. claudia, please marry me.

ditch that prefuse 73 moron

Yeah, I was gonna say, you've got *some* competition there!

i like this lots. "connjur" is my favorite, if i remember correctly

i had the unfortunate luck to meet her while he was present. he was totally cockblocking.

Ha ha, and *I* get called a fangirl! She's really lovely, though. They both are - hell, they all are.

I long ago accepted that I am *never* going to marry Benjamin Curtis but good god, it made me really really happy that he goes out with someone who is so dead cool and creative and talented. Like, it makes me have more appreciation for boys if they have good taste in a partner.

OK, now enough of the creepiness. Back to talking about how amazing their music is.

The second half of "For Kalaja Mari" feels oddly Christmas-y for me, can't put a finger on why.

They're at The Airliner in L.A tonight which is basically like seeing them in your living room. See you all there!

just snuck into my personal top ten

my mom just wrote me this morning telling me how much she likes them!

just snuck into my personal top ten

Ditto.

can i just thank masonic boom for introducing me to this on the best of 2008 thread? good, thanks m.b. a few times in the last couple of days i've been wandering round town with my ipod on and gone "what IS this amazing song that's just come on again?" and it's always 'connjur'.

yar cheers kate! lovely record.

Yay! I am always glad to share the love.

The second half of "For Kalaja Mari" feels oddly Christmas-y for me, can't put a finger on why.

It's the open fifths in the vocal harmonies - it's a classic Xmas carol trick.

Aw, Chris, if you read this before you see them, can you tell Benjamin I said hello? And ask them to plan a NYC show the week that I'm over there. Why couldn't the LA gig just WAIT three weeks until I'm in California? I'd have flown down to LA for that.

My impression upon first listen was that the songs are good and often lovely but they've been badly served by whoever produced it. There really should be more in the way of texture and build and dynamics and intimacy but the production job just flattens everything out. I get this problem with a lot of nu-shoegazey stuff really.

i kind of know what you mean, but i think it's meant to be slick and clean, like of texturally like kraftwerk. some of the synths will be slightly abrasive in a nice way. i'm going to go to the mercury lounge show in a week or so, which might be fun.

I didn't like the production on the album (especially compared to the demos) at first, but it really grew on me with repeated listens - especially listening on headphones. It is very understated, but deliberately so.

Awww, when is that Mercury Lounge show? It's not when I'm in NYC, is it, bah!

No, dammit. Why couldn't it be a month later? Oh yeah, coz they'll be in Japan.

uh huh :(

I'm downloading this now :)

thanks for letting us know

np

Hmm, yeah, this is nice.

Still, I don't know. There's something faintly unsatisfying as well in all this, like there's no actual surprise beyond 'oh, they put that bit of noise there.' I actually like the beats the most, and they seem to be the element that gets the most prominence in each mix.

Agreed though that "Connjur" is the best song they've got so far, it's as if they took the generally good ideas they have elsewhere and recombined them to best effect; also seems to be the song where all three main parts of the band's music (vocals, textures, beats) have an equal balance.

Do you always need to be surprised by music?

I think, for me, the surprise was, OHMIGOD THIS IS THE CULMINATION OF EVERY SINGLE THING I REALLY REALLY LOVE AND WANT MUSIC TO BE.

Hearing them for the first time was like the feeling that someone had been raiding my notebooks and taking EVERY SINGLE ELEMENT I REALLY LOVE and putting it all together in some giant "how to make Kate happy musically" recipe book.

It doesn't need to be surprising. It feels like... like walking into a stranger's house and finding the exact replica of your childhood bedroom, only even BETTER than you remember/imagine it.

and even less creepy than finding a replica of your childhood bedroom in a stranger's house

xpost looking fwd to this now

finding a replica of your childhood bedroom in a stranger's house
*theramin sounds*

Not creepy, just coincidence. I mean, there's a picture of what looks almost exactly like my childhood bedroom on the inside of a Smallstone album - *that* freaked me out.

But... erm - you know what I mean! I hope.

I like the theremin sounds anwaysy wweeeeeooooooweeeeeooooooooohhhh

Oh sod it I'm going to go to the Pier and buy some paisley cushions and make the whole world look like my childhood bedroom.

Do you always need to be surprised by music?

Not at all. But this was a pleasure of the expected, and its impact is less than it might have been. In contrast (say) right now I'm listening to the Birdsongs of the Mesozoic compilation that's just out on Cuneiform and while it's no less derivative in many cases, I'm sure, its reference points are less immediately familiar to me, which I appreciate very much.

I get what you're saying in re: combinations of music coming together just right in terms of what one wants and expects -- this in large part explains my Smashing Pumpkins love in the 1990s, as Billy Corgan was hotwiring a LOT of my record collection and musical contexts at the time. I don't know if I'll necessarily have that moment again, or even if I want to have it, if that makes sense. That's a bit like me now wanting to have an experience like listening to "Soon" for the first time, the whole point is that it was unplanned.

*listens to 3 songs*

o fuk there's snoopy AND gnipgnop

...christmas tree lights and my weird stuffed horse's head made of purple and orange paisley...

DAMN I forgot to go to the Pier. Tomorrow. I need glitter.

Sometimes one wants comfort and familiarity. Or a perfected version of something that seems like your own private world. This album sounds like the inside of my head. I'm going to shut up now.

Sometimes just finding balance of preexisting elements is enough. "iamundernodisguise" is an Enya track with the saccharine backing shunted aside by indie sweat. And that's just what we sometimes need - emotionally uplifting music that doesn't give us the candy bellyache.

SVIIB does wear their influences on their sleeve. Spot the Loveless backing vocal rip, the Neu! riff, a rhythm borrowed from M.I.A. I'm perfectly okay with that.

saw the word "christmas" ^ somewhere and reminded me of the first tune. anyone else think the vocals are kind christmas carol-y? in a good way!

OK wow it's another of their albums where the songs start good and get better and better as the album goes along. Every time I think I've found my favourite song on the album, the next one kicks in, and it's even better...

OTM, at least on initial listen

yo, hardcore fanboying aside, what is this album??? There was a very linear progression between "Disconnect" and "Ghostory" (which I liked but was sorta lukewarm on) but this one sounds SO INTERESTING, like it's so distinctively them but for a band whose sound is so singular, where there is so much potential to regurgitate similar ideas, this manages to have more surprises than I would have expected.

feeling "Signals" and "Music Takes Me" the most so far I think. I've got this playing at work while multitasking so I haven't even paid attention to the lyrics of anything yet.

This was fantastic

One thing that sticks out in the lyrics is that the fire metaphor from Ablaze comes up in a number of other songs. It seems to me that a lot of it is about gratitude, hope, and restoration.

"this is our time" just sort of knocks you for six as a closer, right?

like the king album, this really feels like the sort of thing that's going to give and reveal more and more with each listen

"Confusion" is just perfect, this is a really special album

I'm so happy everyone likes this

Confusion is giving me serious Julee Cruise vibes. Such a stunning song.

I was thinking Eno vibes.

It's all quite lovely. The farewell that shouldn't've been but necessarily is.

Open Your Eyes sounds even more devastating in context. still trying to process the rest of it all but my god, this record. my heart hurts.

it's all great but I've become particularly enamoured of "a thousand times more"

This is a great record. If Hollywood were smart, they'd insert "On My Heart" into every trailer for every movie.

as I opened this thread I noticed the outro of "open your eyes" was playing at the coffee shop I'm currently at (I'd had headphones on) and I teared up

Everything's that I could have said has been said already, but the last three/four songs… what a finale.

I can't be wasting my time with the daggers
When guarding the love in my heart is the battle

The problem (for me, probably not for others) is that right now, The Story Of This Record is kind of getting in the way of me working out what this record actually is.

On one hand, I feel like I've been waiting for it for so damn long (understandably so) that it's been built up into such a thing in my head that no music could ever live up to that expectation. On the other hand, knowing the circumstances of what the creators went through to bring us this record means my brain freezes up in a kind of "HOW DARE YOU" whenever I try to engage any critical facilities with regards to this record.

I just really want to separate this beautiful thing from all the emotional weight the poor thing has to carry I guess.

The problem (for me, probably not for others) is that right now, The Story Of This Record is kind of getting in the way of me working out what this record actually is.

I'm glad someone said that, because I've been having a similar problem. Ultimately I'm not sure the record and the story are really separable, because no matter how faithful Alejandra might have been to the original vision, this is not the exact record that would have emerged in normal circumstances.

At the same time it doesn't feel like a record about bereavement to me, it feels like a breakup album, but the grief can't help but overshadow and inform that, and not just because you can view so many of the lyrics both ways.

I'm still sort of interested in the order of the creative process behind this record. Obviously Benjamin's parts were recorded in their entirety by the time he died, the Guardian interview seemed to suggest that Alejandra had written most of the songs/lyrics before his illness. So she was 'completing' an album that had been conceived in 'normal' circumstances, rather than rewriting whole songs to reflect the new circumstances?

I can't actually imagine what it must have been like completing this album, by the way. Most people can more-or-less cope with losing a friend, loved one, collaborator or future livelihood, but losing all of them at once. Fucking hell.

(With the exception of Confusion, I mean, I know that was written later)

I keep reading all of these interviews, and it's just getting like it's too much, but I can't stop reading them...

http://m.pitchfork.com/thepitch/1039-school-of-seven-bells-alejandra-deheza-on-the-loss-of-her-musical-soulmate-benjamin-curtis/

I can't imagine what it's like to try to promote this record, bringing all this stuff up over and over again. Like, is that helpful, is that part of processing and dealing with grief?

I was talking with my Mum shortly after he died, and she's a priest, part of her job is talking people through the grieving process and she kept saying, no it's important to talk about the person you've lost - but I can't imagine having to do that so publicly, and with the press, and trying to promote a piece of work through it. That just seems an impossibly difficult task. It's emotionally hard reading it; I can't imagine saying it over and over to different journalists. Alley is way braver than I'll ever be.

I'm listening to the album over and over - it seems like all I want to hear at the moment - but it's this compartmentalised process of separating "here's this amazing new album from what was my favourite band" from going over the story of this loss over and over in the press. I have to not think about what it means (especially since this is the first of their albums that I've KNOWN what it was about) in order to connect with it. One of the things I always loved about this band was their lyrics were so arcane and abstract that it was possible to project your own stories and needs onto. Now it's like there's only one interpretation that the stories are locked down to, and I'm finding that strange.

I'm mostly just concentrating on the little musical details, and finding things to be thrilled by: the way that the vocal melody on Elias echoes / pays homage to the vocal on Joviann, that tickles me. The speak-singing bits on On My Heart, how they shoot out at right angles to one another. The rising distortion that swallows the end of A Thousand Times More (I wish there were 1000x more distortion - that could easily have wigged out into a Put Your Sad Down wig-out). The freaking bassline on Music Takes Me. There's so much in here!

As an observer it feels nice to read this, I remember reading your comments about Alpinisms back then, I think about choral rounds, and how it helped me enjoy the band then.

That's a beautiful elegy from Aley. I hope she wasn't forced to talk to paul de revere though, that guy sucks

Well, yeah, each interview in isolation is really beautiful and moving, and she speaks really well and with great poise about something obviously very devastating. But the cumulative effect of reading many of them in a row is a little unsettlingly like, well, grief porn. These are also really moving:

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/school-of-seven-bells-sviib/#_

I mean in this one ^^^^^ she talks about how some interviews are really hard. And again in this one:

http://larecord.com/archive/2016/02/23/school-of-seven-bells-interview-alejandra-deheza

I don't know how to balance my curiosity, as a fan, to read every interview, every piece about this record to find out how it was made, with my discomfort as a human being, feeling like the whole interview and promotion process was a heavy experience for someone I respect a lot. Just voicing my discomfort, and not knowing if my response should be "stop reading if it's upsetting you, you dummy" or "she wouldn't do it if she wasn't OK with it, so it's fine".

I've kinda tried to avoid the promo/interviews surrounding this release and basically attempt to listen to the album as a piece of music and take it for what it is.

I am just noticing the strummed guitar in the bg of "On My Heart" and it is giving me some Spacemen 3 vibes

I think this is a very good album but for some reason I am not completely immersed in it in the same way I was for the previous three. I don't know if I'm hesitant to engage because of the unavoidable heaviness of emotion associated with this album, if I'm just not in the right headspace to dive as deeply into this as I have their previous work, if I've saturated myself with their sound, or some combination of the three. I do think it's me and not the album because I don't think the songwriting on this is any weaker than their previous releases; it's just not engaging me the way I thought it would.

This is really the first of theirs I've heard and I'm finding it intoxicating. A Thousand Times More is a current standout, though I can see that changing from week to week based on its consistent strength. It's just such a beautiful album.

"The Night" is the ninth most popular SIIVB song on Spotify and "Face to Face On High Places" isn't in the list AT ALL

because it is above #1

Ghostory is sounding as magnificent as ever tonight, particularly 'Low Times' and 'Scavenger' ...

Thanks for inadvertently reminding me to go back and listen to "I L U" on a loop for the last 45 minutes. Top 10 song of the decade for me.

I don't know if I could comfortably say it was in the Top 10 of the decade, but it's definitely one of my favourite songs released this decade. My favourite song on that LP by miles.

i want you
to know that
i love "I L U"

"Ablaze" however is Top 10 of the decade easily

If I had to put together a personal "Best of SVIIB" then 'Ablaze' would be on it without a doubt. I could say that about quite a few SVIIB songs, though.

"Open Your Eyes" has made me cry so many times, and it still gets to me even though I've heard it so many times.

Still miss ya, Ben.

Alejandra Deheza has done a really wonderful new DJ mix, which features some new original music?!?! (Which will be an immensely pleasing surprise to any SVIIB fans out there.)

https://soundcloud.com/coralmorphologic/cccmix3

Wow, thanks for this! Won't be able to listen to now but definitely this weekend sometime.

Disconnect From Desire bangs like a mofo

It just gets me that on top of the tragedy itself the band seem almost a bit lost to history now. There s should be at least four more albums they would have done by this point.

SVIIB DJ set and a live show from 2012 just posted here: https://ijwthstd.blogspot.com/2023/11/culture-collide-2012-oct-3-4-5-6-7.html

Sadly, despite the careful "DSM6 -> PAC6LC3B -> R-09HR -> Soundforge -> FLAC", it still sounds as though it was recorded on an old dictaphone. Still nice to hear, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIpLseaHz0w

Listening to the glorious Ghostory and the above EP this morning. They never put a foot wrong, imho. Miss them.

i was just thinking about reviving this thread a few days ago after "Scavenger" came up on shuffle

same, miss them a lot

Still very much do.

The Conga Room here in LA recently closed after a long run. The club is legendary as a Latin music venue but occasionally would have an out-of-place booking - including this spectacular 2011 show with Benjamin in full guitar-hero mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5IRzQMG8zs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGR9oiMOpMc

I believe that is the amazing Chris Colley on drums (...and hard to tell but is he also triggering the electronics?)