OV PAIN - The Churning Blue of Noon LP

Highly recommended.

We were huge fans of their debut and it took us a few listens before we thought "Oh my, how good is Churning Blue!"

Dunedin/ Melbourne duo Ov Pain’s (Renee Barrance, Tim Player) sophomore album The Churning Blue of Noon is an arcane and fascinating mosaic of musical styles and tenebrous aesthetics. Delving into deeper and darker places than the frigid coldwave/ post-punk of their 2017 debut.

The intervening years between the two records have seen the pair take on new instruments and explore new modes of musical expression. The band say they were listening to a lot of vocal-less music, in particular drone and free jazz, and were incorporating more improvisation into their live show and writing process. The result is a record of experimental, psychedelic dark-wave that envelopes the listener in a languid wave of gothic drone. Both Barrance and Player take turns at vocals, and both their vocal styles, though very different, bring to mind incantations. The whole record has a mystical, transcendental quality. Ov Pain weave a soundscape thick and heady, lyrics spelling out a cryptic largely first-person narrative, that plays the dystopic off against the euphoric. This tactic is at play throughout the album both thematically and stylistically. The listening experience is all-encompassing and cathartic. The Churning Blue of Noon is a dark and beautiful work, a record to lose yourself in.