Bespeckled in Mark Beazley’s (Rothko’s founder) own blood, the cover reads like a starry constellation or drifting pollen caught in sterile white – ‘A personal account of conflict’, is a new 3 trk offering from those guitar masters Rothko and a taster for the forthcoming full-lengther hopefully out later this year, artwork permitting.
The title track A personal account of conflict, is like a sound collage that’s been left deliberately awkward - direction is not only jolted by disconcertingly loud crashes throughout, but each segment is texturally opposed to the next. Beginning with a loud blast, quickly followed by a mournful violin shanty that acts like a slow-mo scattering of debris, time is suspended or stretched along bowed reverberations. This poetry is short lived, as the whole thing is tarnished by a menacing rumble, drowning out colour in mechanical relentlessness. Another blast sweeps everything clean, the void filled by some characteristic ‘Rothko’ stepped bass and the lightest of violin backing - a delight cut short as the track is terminated by the same means as it started, like a epitaph to something unresolved.
Sit in silent thought, possesses lovely darkened hues, fuzzy guitar spreads like the magnetised sway of iron filings, twilight cleaving a slowly shifting drama, circular guitar snaking within itself as reverberated percussion shadows its even strokes. I’ve had this track on repeat and it just gets better every time, a masterful atmosphere that never tires in revealing something new. I beg you to turn those lights down and listen.
Sit in silent thought.mp3 (dwld expired)
Burn darkness in fires is a simplistic guitar motif that is built upon, overlaid – a repetitive blissful lustre of tightening and rolling textures, swollen, modular and very physical, you can almost feel yourself rocking 'boat-like' along. This soon loses intensity as isolated bleeps signal to fade out and the EP ends.
According to Mark these last two tracks echo the bands recent live exploits and I’m eager to hear more as they certainly mine a rich emotional vein, a free floating semi abstract world that demands your attention - something they thankfully show no signs of losing even after all these years...
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