The Strindbergs - Ghost Thresholds and Etudes

available at: The Strindbergs

The sound poetry of Ghost Thresholds and Etudes by the Strindbergs will “haunt your face,” to quote “Kiss the Rough Things,” the first track of this astonishing album. This subtle and jarring poemusic lurks; it finds its way into the hidden recesses of your consciousness, and takes up permanent residence in the attics of your soul. 

The unexpected is the norm among these ghosts; bees are “arriving vectors of honey/ in the windows (“The Last Architectural Grasp of the Hive”) and “an assassin can originate anywhere” (“Reversal”). These ghosts are no friendly cartoons, but terrifying wraiths in a world where fire and flood may shift places at any moment, as “branches ignite and fuse / a flood will find you on the road” (“Kiss the Rough Things”).

The music, by Chris Mansel, waxes and wanes with Jake Berry’s vocals like moon and tide. This insistent music, startling and plaintive, is featured in the album’s two instrumental tracks. The other eight tracks include The Strindbergs’ vivid poetry—chanted, dirged, and bardically sung—as dark and painful as the band’s namesake. 

Peopled with widows, birds, insects, angels (“Erosion is so simple –forever alive / in a sparrow” — “Angels on High Tension Cables”), this poemusic seeks the strange juxtaposition, the unexpected noun. It is music and poetry to return to often, for a needed jolt of the unusual. Listen at the peril of your comfort; listen for your fix of experiment; listen to hear your deepest fear and mirror. But listen.

Larissa Shmailo (In Paran; The No-Net World; Exorcism)

released 01 December 2011 
Chris Mansel – music, sound and effects 
Jake Berry – vocals, piano on Instrumental No. 2 

all songs written by Chris Mansel and Jake Berry 
except Instrumental No. 1 – written by Chris Mansel 

Recorded, mixed and mastered in November 2011 

Music, sound, audio tracks and effects written and recorded by Chris Mansel at Rabid Bear Studios, Florence, AL 

Words, vocals, and piano on Instrumental No. 2 written and recorded by Jake Berry at 9th Street Laboratories, Florence, AL 

Photographs by Chris Mansel