(written by Islander)
If we think of ourselves as listener-fish scurrying through the sea of our days and music-makers as throngs of fishers trying to catch our attention, what lures work best? For some fish it might be affectionate familiarity with a band’s previous music. Lacking such familiarity, it might be a genre description or a “for fans of” reference or an al-luring piece of cover art.
In the case of Voidthrone from the Pacific Northwest and their new album Dreaming Rat (set for release on May 8th), it might be all of that, but they have one additional lure — an intriguing concept underlying the album (or overarching it). They organize the album’s nine songs into a triptych of parallel “Arcs” which together create “a three-part cosmic death ritual”. Each numbered Arc has its own title, and we’ll get to those, but the three could be summed up with these words:
“a solar system burning through its lifespan, a civilization collapsing under its own complexity, and a parasite replicating itself across language, culture, and flesh”
