Style: Hazy ambient
Primary Emotions/Themes: Consistently flirting with greatness only to stumble at the last moment
Thoughts: BVDub may be one of my favorite ambient artists. His combination of obscure ambient melodies with a thick wall of haze is second to none. That said, with the amount of releases this dude has to his name it's natural that some will be of higher quality than others.
Wrath and Apathy consists of four songs, all around twenty minutes in length. Four songs, four sides to a double LP. Sounds rather intentional to me.
Each one of the compositions feels more like a journey than any type of typical song. Anyone familiar with BVDub will know that his compositions tend to be well over ten minutes long. They might also be familiar with how his music progresses from the start of the song to the finish. Some do this better than others, some feel more complete than others, some are flat out better than others.
I keep hinting at the varying quality of his music for good reason. Wrath and Apathy is not one of his better releases. The whole affair seems... for lack of a better term: lacking. The atmosphere is there, but it's not quite as developed as other releases. The vocals and harrowing soundscapes are there, but they don't feel as well thought out or planned as similar releases. The melodies are there, but again they are lacking compared to more compelling releases from BVDub.
There are some good ideas here, a seed planted for a good song. That seed never truly gets the nourishment it needs, it's always stuck as a sapling. It's a damn shame.
I really wanted to like Wrath and Apathy, and while it's still a BVDub album I would rather listen to pretty much any of the other albums that I own by him. This one still hits the turntable every now and then, but most of the time it's quickly replaced by another entry in his extensive discography.
Written May 16th 2024
No comments:
Post a Comment