WOW - Falene LP

Limited edition silk-screen cover.

Highly recommended.

What if Rettore recorded an album in Twin Peaks? The nightly and subtle arrangements hit my weak spot for sultry and gloomy music.

"Italian quartet Wow do kind of a cool thing here, moving in multiple directions but minimally-so. A restless collection of pared-down ideas, I feel that while Falene is around half an hour long, I am less close to understanding anything about this group as when I first read the little promo sticker on the sealed polyethylene bag. Falene opens with some investigative drones, seemingly the work of a couple knobs and only one hand, and they follow it with a smoke-filled indie-goth boudoir, the sort of thing that The Black Heart Procession and Slaves messed around with back in the day when hardcore kids were wearing JNCOs the first time around. Length is no object to Wow, as the aforementioned goth song is nine minutes long; I dunno, are you gonna tell them to stop? My favorite cut is probably the b-side opening remix from Hugo Sanchez, which takes a painfully slow beat and walks it in a circle until the floorboards are worn down… reminds me of a Neubau release with live drums, chunky bass and little else, which pleases me greatly. That track wraps with a field recording of nature, which isn’t particularly revelatory at this point, and then Falene closes with a relatively brief paisley-psych ditty redolent of Sébastien Tellier or fellow Italians Jennifer Gentle, because Wow clearly threw the rulebook away without cracking it open once." YGR