Ryan Graveface, a quiet and modest young man, has just released his newest Dreamend album, “So I Ate Myself Bit By Bit (SIAMBBB),” and what a fine work it is. Graveface, Dreamend’s prime architect, is also the mastermind of Graveface Records. Additionally, Graveface is an integral part of Black Moth Super Rainbow (BMSR), of which you may have heard. What is of major import is the substantive quality of Graveface’s work as Dreamend on SIAMBBB. This concept album brings to fruition the aural incarnation of a supposed serial killer’s diary, which Graveface allegedly purchased at auction some years back. The shadowy circumstances and hearsay of murder surrounding this release only adds to the album’s mysterious nature, a nature that exudes ethereal eeriness and cuts to the bone like the fog of pre-dawn tall tale-ing at the ol’ lake house.
Lest previously cemented notions or expectations from either Graveface Record’s back catalogue or by BMSR sway you, rest assured, SIAMBBB stands, firmly balanced, all on its own. Inevitably, there are those who will prematurely draw comparisons to BMSR. Certainly, successive Black Moth member solo releases further demonstrate each player’s individual styles. These solo divergences serve not only to illuminate each member’s discreet, yet familiar, bases of contributions to the merged BMSR sound but also highlight individual talents in a “pre-formed Voltronic” sense. In fact, while Graveface’s style is immediately apparent it also shines like a lighthouse beacon in the rising for of an autumn eve.
While Dreamend’s newest release is a prime example of that piecemeal sound, this album exceeds expectation and displays a soulfulness one is unlikely to expect from an album whose basis lays in serial murder. Most striking were the transient thoughts, ebbing and flowing throughout my listen, of John Wayne Gacy, Steve Martin, Sufjan Stevens, and myriad other seemingly disparate source materials summoning intangibly delightful emotions.
Where the BMSR connection truly emerges is in the production of the established BMSR/Dreamend high quality lo-fi sound. While critics argue that production style seems substantively tenuous, it ascends to the role of ‘band member’ adding richness and texture. This album sounds, at times, as if Dreamend hand cranked tones through a phonoautograph, pushing the sound thorough blown speakers, underwater, through two tin cans. It whirls in twangy and hollow modulation; instantaneously harkening Graveface’s singularly identifiable banjo and guitar melodies from BMSR’s “Eating Us.” The crackly vocals, similarly, add an authenticity that is at once foreign and recognizable.
This album’s conceptual nature and being a musical iteration of a deliberate tale caused me to focus with greater attention to the story’s details, track by track. Thus it seems appropriate to review the album as I listened to it and as, I assume, it was intended to be listened to.
CHAPTER I
“Pink Cloud In the Woods” introduces some, or rather assists some in the regression, to the campfires of youth. Cicadas chirp and embers pop and the humidity and smoke are palpable. Unbeknownst to what is in store only increases the psychic devastation of what is to come. The snare begins to brush and the wispy banjo, daintily picked, gently sweeps us into a whirlwind that ultimately cannot be undone. I forget, momentarily, that I am listening to music and, based on my research of the album’s origins, begin to feel complicit in something frighteningly foreign.CHAPTER II
The breathy organs of “Where you belong” swell the general tone of a pleasant progression. I allow myself to be continually misled through an air of happiness. I can taste the sun of July Saturdays in 1993 while I listen to this song. This nostalgia further overwhelms my senses, gleefully disorienting me for what follows. CHAPTER III
“Magnesium Light” is as brilliant as its namesake and stands out as exemplar even amongst SIAMBBB’s best offerings. The phased swirls paint cracked orange loops which form a blurred vision of our greatest star. This is tantamount to staring at the sun from an active merry-go-round. Never have I been so susceptible to the hypnotic abilities of creepy modern folk music, which incidentally is meant in the most flattering of ways. The combination of reverberating twang and alliterating vocals “I looked at the sky today and said, I said hey ah and I looked in your eyes today and said I said hey ah. I looked at the stars tonight and said, I said don’t go, I looked at the stars tonight and said, I said don’t go away,” are a culmination of compounded joy brought on by the album’s opening tracks. This happiness, which as we soon see was induced with purpose, fades like the accuracy of distant memories. If by design, this is extremely clever.
CHAPTER IV
“Interlude” serves as a frequency-oscillated transition from a brightly shimmering place of tranquility to mentally deep decrepitude from which one can never return. In retrospect “Magnesium Light” and “Interlude” are forceful reminders of how quickly contentment may be dulled by a single moment of reality. “Interlude” is a descent into madness, obsession, violence, and ultimately unending torment resulting in the ultimate corporeal cessation, death. CHAPTER V
Guilt seeps from “Repent” in tangible drips of emptiness and loss. The slow guitar picking, sparse bells, and harmonies are a sound of sorrowful beauty. Any living being may have difficulty listening to this track without evoking some type of depressive teenage empathy and feelings of failure, or worse yet, depressive adult empathy. Art of this variety is evocative and bittersweet, successful in rousing emotion, for better or, here, for worse. CHAPTER VI
“A Thought” conjures dark, fuzzy wizardry and instills feelings of deep concern and paranoia. Repeating “I cannot, I cannot, stop in the middle,” this must absolutely describe the obsessive inability to willfully cease a deeply engaged behavior. This is the clearest, and most disturbingly direct, example of this concept album’s stated theme. This track is effective in its simplicity and I listen through cupped hands as a child watches a horror movie, through barely spread fingers.CHAPTER VII
“Pieces” embodies desperation and behaves as a deep-seated terror would, managing to push deeper the floor of we once believed rock bottom to be. For that reason “Pieces” robs the title of “most despicable Dreamend song” from “A Thought.” Mind you, this is a beautifully crafted robbery, which in this story telling incarnation is hopefully without victim.Following directly from the hypnotic fury and an uncontrollable zone of purposeful monotony of “A Thought,” “Pieces” snap you from the act violence suddenly into a stroll through a summer’s lane, raising spirits only to crush them along with bone and sinew.
CHAPTER VIII
“My Old Brittle Bones” perpetuates the longing developed in the album’s second half. Graveface wails “And I wait and I wait and I wait for you, like you waited, and waited and waited here for me. And one day and one day I’ll be set free, but your ghost oh your ghost, oh your ghost it will find me.” These are the words of a victim embracing death thereby transforming into a taunting force of vengeance from beyond the grave. Whether or not this voice, I imagine as a disembodied force of supernatural origin, is within the killer’s mind or independent of the murderer, is of little importance in the grand scheme. A song of repentance, the bewilderment of what has recently transpired draws little sympathy for the protagonist. The story and Graveface’s falsetto vie for my attention, but neither wins.
This battle for my graces is disturbingly peppy for its content yet I am distracted, longingly awaiting the next chapter in the story. How wonderful to have immediate concern for mental safety outweighed by the curiosity of what follows.
CHAPTER IX
Aching Silence, in my estimation, is an attempt by the killer to explain his poor lot in life. His aim, trying to convince us that he is not truly the abhorrent thing of which we are absolutely certain he is. The arpegiated ghostly twitches pulse and further aggravate our perception of the killer. Again, I know not whether these notions originate in the mind of from beyond the grave. Is this the voice of the truly dead or the almost dead as a result of psychic numbness from within?CHAPTER X
As the story winds up, the killer describes, in sufficient detail, the lifeless, bullet ridden, and soon to be dismembered corpse of his victim. “An Admission” ends with grumbling bass and has a frenetic pace throughout, emulating the end of a horrific tale. Yet again, the album’s theme is the unfathomable violence of humans and the constant battle within a madman’s mind. The dilemma here is to hate the actor while being enchanted with the beauty of the music. In this respect, Graveface succeeds immensely. I am mesmerized and disgusted throughout the album. The timbre forces regressions to youthful frivolity yet the words are horrifying. The album evokes a spectrum of feelings. Never would I have suspected this type of fare from the label, had I not been a supporter of Graveface records for such an extended time, particularly since this is less in your face psychedelia than those works that brought initially drew me to the label. However, I implore you to listen to this album, actively. You will be a richer, and possibly, more conscientious person, two qualities most people will do well by to deepen.
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