Staff Reviews

Bong - We Are, We Were and We Will Have Been

Review by Joseph Rowan

Whatever mysterious criteria one uses to rate drone albums Bong easily exceed in all of them»

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We are, we were and we will have been continues Bong's unregulated experiments on tonal prolonging. Solemn in its delivery and frightening in its implications, this latest LP signifies a point of no return from the Pied Pipers of mesmeric drone, its two near twenty minute tracks will surely loop and envelop indefinitely, freeing the listener from this increasingly unfamiliar material world and mercifully trapping them in the weightlessness of Bong's sonic void. Microtonal adjustments and invading frequencies are pleated into a tapestry of gooey guitar and midnight-ritual percussion, melting at a glacial pace across 'Time Regained' and 'Find Your Own Gods'. The first of the two tracks creaks under the weight of residual distortion and unfathomable density, while the second opens with the powerful command of the track title, evoking a deity-defying thought process that unravels through the duration of the song, providing the synth-mist and distant rumbles with an origin so ancient it predates comprehension. We are, we were and we will have been is Bong's report from their explorations past the point where others fear. The album was captured and mixed in November 2014 by Mark Wood at the Soundroom in Gateshead, and the cover art is from 'Thomson's Aeolian Harp', by famed pre-impressionist painter JMW Turner, picturing an infant London in the background.
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