Off & On

Set Fire To Flames Sings Reign Rebuilder (2001) Telegraphs In Negative / Mouths Trapped In Static (2003)

At first I thought I had imported Set Fire To Flames’ 2003 album twice, but fortunately I realised it was double CD before I deleted half of it. Very fortunate, actually, as I have no idea where I got this stuff from. How strange that one can so easily fall in love with music about which one knows zip. This may be a good thing; if people get used to disembodied sounds, tunes without a face, that’s surely the first step away from personality-trumps-talent.

“Disembodied sounds.” Did I really say that? That’s a pretty good description of Set Fire To Flames. They have the techniques of Postrock— quiet guitars overamped, repetition, skewed samples, scanned phone conversations, loud rustling noises, and… yes… heaps of full-bodied solo violin — off pat, but enough personality of their own mainly to escape cliché.

I’m drifting. One track reminds me of spending a night in a forest; I look at the title, it’s called "In Prelight Isolate". How ’bout that? Tone poetry that works. Apart from the obvious reference I alluded to in my opening sentence, and the wonderful Boxhead Ensemble, the outfit SFTF remind me of most often is The Marinernine: whose A Little Something From The Weathervane’s Perspective is a forgotten belter of sneaky understatedness, in a Mathrocky vein, with obdurate studio processes.

Sings Reign Rebuilder is clearly the sound of SFTF before they broke completely into pieces. Mainly acoustic in intent if not always in instrumentation, its crescendoes are succinct while still carrying a devaststing payload.

Telegraphs… is less obviously numerological, but with the same fidgety ambience, verging on occasion a little too close to a foley catalogue. At its best, though, as on tacks like ‘When Sorrow Shoots Her’ with its sighing strings and desolate guitar twang, we forget that not all music sounds like this. We have slipped quietly through the subtle window and the Universe has shifted sidways.

This is the music not of your nightmares, but of the fleeting half-dreams that slip away right after you wake. Something important was there but we’ll never know what. Just enjoy having been touched by its presence.