Adore//Repel - Empty Orchestra

  by Steve Kinrade

published: 27 / 5 / 2017

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Review

'Empty Orchestra' is the debut album from West Yorkshire's Adore//Repel, and it is safe to say that it isn’t your useful run of the mill musical offering. You could say it’s a mighty brave musical statement. It also could be argued that it is mostly an instrumental album, one full of atmospheric haunting guitar motifs among the sometimes very powerful compositions, and also sometimes tender. The curve ballot that, however, catches you out are the vocals, their delivery seeming to be designed as a counterpoint to the – at times – achingly beautiful music. They remind me of those death metal purveyors Bloodspot – a vocal cord shredder, lyrics spewed forth from inner bile of frustration, despair and anxiety. A visceral commentary of just how you may be feeling. An emotional touchstone. If the vocals are nodding vigorously to the genre of death metal, then the music evokes the finest hours of the likes of Chapterhouse, or my personal favourites – the mighty Pale Saints, all shimmering and glacial musical beauty. And it is all the better for it. The secret to this bands usp – unique selling point – is that they build on the philosophy of the ying and yang, of the beautiful and brutal, of adoration and repulsion. It is interesting to note that 'Empty Orchestra' is the English translation for Karaoke, and in so doing this may be the band's invitation to us to take these compositions, with or without vocals, as powerful musical templates to reflect back upon ourselves the life we lead and feel, lives to nowhere, to nothing, to no one – our very own personal dead souls moment. Only if we allow it to be. This is a debut album of a band that, to this listener, has succeeded in catching the zeitgeist of these uncertain times. We glimpse in these compositions a soaring hope of what could be, but is then on some tracks counterbalanced by the harsh lyrical content of the actual, which grounds our musical experience in the now. Musically it soars and crashes, glides and lurches, a rollercoaster, mirroring life. It is a tremendous achievement that needs to be taken seriously on so many levels – musically, emotionally and philosophically. Adore//Repel. Ying//Yang. Just like real life. Seek this out; you won’t be disappointed.

Track Listing:-

1 Intro
2 Months Ago
3 Sticks in the Crow
4 Jim Hellwig
5 / /
6 Secret Road, Part II
7 Interlude
8 Orca
9 Empty Orchestra

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/adorerepel/
http://www.adorerepel.co.uk/
https://adorerepel.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy7uB
https://plus.google.com/11414328303980
https://twitter.com/adorerepel