Pleasure Forever, a trio who comprise of vocalist / keyboardist Andrew Rothbard, drummer Dave Clifford and guitarist Joshua Hughes release their first album `Distal` this month, some twenty years after the band’s last proper album `Alter` was released.
The album opens with the oddly titled `Neolith Nonce` a dreamy offering with lyrics that seem to be fairly dystopian shared really quietly over a rhythmic drumbeat that really draws you in. We enjoy a further hypnotic track with a tinkling recurring piano tone in `Sigil Pathos` whose title suggests an inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical persuasive powers.
`To The Last Recorded Syllable of Time` to me was pretty trippy and possibly hinted at the end of a journey or voyage. As the number evolves the vocals become fairly distorted. In `A Heavy Involvement in Unreality` the delivery of this musical soundscape became quite absorbing and had a kind of reflective almost tenderness about it.
`Lexicorpus Grimoire` has a fairly sixties retro texture and as a grimoire is a book of magic spells the title may refer to a design or the use and evaluation of magic incantations. Regardless, it`s another alluring aural sculpture. There was a delightful psychedelic sensibility to `Sunshine Super Hits` which moves along with an irresistible spellbinding atmosphere.
This release closes out with `Traipsing Elegiac` an instrumental number that races along at times and has an apprehensive sense of foreboding about it.
`Distal` is a really interesting listen and is pretty difficult to categorise in a musical genre as it seems to draw aspects from a number of sources. One of the definitions of distal is the point situated away from the centre of the body or from the point of attachment and that as strange as it seems may help to explain this body of work that it is a little detached, but interestingly so.
An album that really needs to be heard to be understood.
Rating 8 / 10
REVIEW : PLEASURE FOREVER – DISTAL (2023)
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