Single Review: Coms

Coms sounds like a clown rubbing wet crocks against a saxophone. After a few seconds it also sounds like somebody close is tracing their finger around a half empty wine glass and somebody far away is buffing a bird cage with an angle grinder. Further along the track there is a tiny steam engine driving backwards. Finally, police sirens have fallen asleep and are snoring.

The reason it sounds like this is because Anamnesis is doing the thing from I Am Sitting in a Room where Alvin Lucier records himself talking and keeps playing it back into a biggish room until it sounds like wine glasses and bird cages. Lucier’s sample was an explanation of his thesis, but Anamnesis has chosen to say, “I am trying to talk to you but I cannot get you to listen to me”, which ties into the concept of the purposefully misspelt coms, meaning comms, meaning communications, which is ironic because whenever anyone says they’re in comms it’s a wishy-washy word that communicates nothing.

They may as well have said “I have no mouth, and I must scream” because it’s like the sound designey hidden tracks from 90’s alt metal records that used to scare the shit out of me as a kid. The non wine-cage parts were derived from the likes of Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead. I’m reminded of industrial projects like Prurient and an old black metal band I heard once called Havohej.

Anamnesis’ mission statement is to produce “willfully obscure and difficult” music and they proudly pre-empt labels like pretentious and self-indulgent. In this case, self-awareness really does make it ok.
I get bored just reviewing music anyway.
5 stars.