Apse

Just so you are prepared, these are not pop songs. Most likely they will never see radio play outside of college radio, they will not grace the television broadcasts of MTV or VH1 (who still claim to be music channels), and chances are most of America will never know about Apse. But, I sincerely doubt that this fact bothers the group one iota. In fact, I would assume that this is much to the liking of Apse, a group structured around Robert Toher and the rotating cast of musicians that comprises the musical collective that professes to, “thrive on concentrated isolation”. The group’s name is taken from architectural terminology, and is defined as “a semicircular recess covered by a hemispherical vault, most often referenced in the context of Christian churches; it is a piece of construction that denotes an altar, a sanctuary”. And while the aural output of the primal, post-rock group does not stand in harmonious unity with the ethos of the Christian faith, the group does place themselves into a highly intellectual conceptual bracket by adopting the term “Apse” as a moniker.

According to the press release that accompanies Spirit, the current re-release of their debut 2006 album, the record is “less an album than one long song cut into pieces”, and this description is a more than accurate summary of Spirit. From, its opening track, aptly titled “(Intro)”, the album immediately immerses the listener into an ethereal atmosphere of sound that recalls various colors and shapes without depicting any one concrete image. The album as a whole adopts this impressionistic construction, as one song leads seamlessly into the next, leaving the listener with a sense of listening to the various movements of a large opus, and by the close of Spirit, it is difficult to recall one particular song.

Apart from a few digressions into atmospheric noise clusters, Spirit tends to gather the majority of its momentum via a rolling drum pattern, which is played upon an ominous sounding floor tom. It is this primordial percussion that defines the aural aesthetic for much of Spirit, giving the listener the impression of watching the evolution of the human species, beginning with our collective rise from the ooze. Apse’s commitment to an extended song format serves to heighten the evolutionary aspect of the album as a whole, with the longest track clocking in at an impressive 11:05. It is precisely this extended format that will either make or break Spirit for the potential listener.

I profess to quite enjoy the largely instrumental, untraditional, and extended structures that are commonly adopted by “post-rock”, however, some sections of Apse’s debut record even lose me to a certain extent. In tracks such as “Blackwood Gates” and the decidedly shorter “Shade of the Moor”, the driving momentum of the songs lose some of their impact due to the fact that the development and progression of the pieces takes quite some time. As a result of the dramatic development of grindingly steady percussion sections, some of the kinetic energy of the song is lost or never comes to full fruition.

Despite the somewhat repetitive structures that comprise Spirit, the album as a whole presents the listener with a different take on instrumental (with the exception of vocals that are largely atmospheric) “post-rock”. Apse shies away from slow builds of guitars that culminate in barrages of distortion, and instead focuses on building a strong sonic foundation, and then augmenting the texture of the dominant sounds. The result is an album that indeed stands as, “one long song cut into pieces” with Apse leading the listener through the various incarnations of a particular dominant melody. It is this augmentation of melody that is the strongest feature of Spirit; songs such as “From the North”, “Legions”, and “Shade of The Moor” all share a similar melody, and as the album shifts from one track to the next, the listener feels as though they are passing through these melodies, much like a car pass through various metropolitan areas. Overall, the album is successful in its portrayal of the inherent dissonance of modernized society, and Apse leaves us with something to both listen to and think about.

Highlight Tracks: “The Crowned”, “Legions”

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