As a cold wind whistles through the shattered windows of a ruined church and a lone piano resolutely fills the cracked nave with its melody (in a Sisters of Mercy “1969” style), a voice that may be Keifer Sutherland’s ponders the approach
of Death. “We spend all of our lives trying to stop Death: hating, inventing, loving, praying, fighting, killing. But what do we really know about Death? Just that nobody comes back. But there comes a point in life, a moment, when your mind
outlives its desires, its obsessions…”
This is the opening statement of Red Reflection’s return to Frozen Empire Media with the grandiose Prelude To Annihilation. “Gift,” with its spectral wind and striking piano, posits the question which will run throughout this record: maybe, when all else has faded, Death will be something we’ll finally embrace. Prelude to Annihilation plays out like a final summation: a tallying and weighing of a life led. “In Vertigo” captures the last time you were in love, blissfully caught up an emotion which blew away all other fears and doubts. “Withering World” is a forced march across a blasted plain, the final push towards the fatal goal which awaits all of us at the end. As great machines bleed steam into the morning air during “While England Slept,” a chamber orchestra and a drum machine provide impetus for early morning espionage (in fact, this track would be great incidental music for a short film based on Jorge Luis Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths). If the piano melody of “Gift” is the leitmotif of our lives, then “Nearly God” is the climactic big beat remix of our greatest achievement, the Technicolor recreation of our proudest moment done up with high orchestration, trip-hop beats, and just a bit of squelchy noise.
It’s been more than two years since Red Reflection’s first record, Amid The Ruins, and the intervening time has been well spent. The orchestration of Prelude to Annihilation is more assured and more confident. The texturing of the tracks sounds like there is an entire fleet of stringed instruments working hard to achieve the rich sonic envelope of the work. The beats — both noise-inflected and tribal — augment the moods and focus the energies of the songs. Red Reflection has forged a connection between the gothic orchestration of Shinjuku Thief’s Witch Hammer trilogy and Craig Armstrong’s operatic soundtrack work.
“Maybe Death is a Gift.” Maybe, but the prevailing emotion left in the wake of Prelude To Annihilation is: not yet. Red Reflection has some things left to do
in this life, and he knocks out the spectre of the sophomore slump with great panache. This record will be on my Top Ten list at the end of the year. Highly recommended.
Prelude to Annihilation is OUT NOW on Frozen Empire Media.
- Frozen Empire Media
- Red Reflection
