Broken Shoulder – Broken Shoulderrr

When the own band has tagged their music as “commercial suicide”, at least you know they are being honest. But let’s not be too flippant or dismissive, as while there is absolutely no commercial appeal to be found in Broken Shoulder‘s schizophrenic EP, Broken Shoulderrr, there is a lot of atmospheric stuff being deftly put together, based on dissonances and droning. A lot of droning.

The first three tracks (‘Morning is broken’, ‘Chocolate one room disco’ and ‘Uff/magow’) feel like a whole track split in three. There’s a few elements amidst the chaotic nature of this maelstrom that pop their head a few times, whether it’s the droning keyboard or the quick finger picking/random guitar doodling, the disconcerting nature of the tracks feels cohesive.

As jarring as it might sound, there’s some sort of soothing elements in these noise-polluted songs. ‘Chocolate one room disco’ does have a very playful bassline that, for some reason, managed to lure me into a sense of peace. ‘Ultimate Donko’ (or ultimate Plinko as I called it) is the sound of idle finger doodling about. Strangely enough, it’s loud but peaceful. That might not make sense, but words can’t describe this sort of stuff. Then again, ‘Ultimate Donko’ has the responsibility of calming you down after the wild ride that is ‘Sato Costume’, which sports some very saturated atmospheres, a lot of delay and sliding about over the frets, all backed by a morose, almost sombre organ.

You’ll probably find that most reviews for Broken Shoulderrr herald ‘Stille Nacht’ as the best piece. Gotta agree there: the atmosphere is thick, the mood is mesmerising and the strange blaring sound (is it a slowed down brass sample? an ebow hitting a string slowed down? some sort of electronic shenanigan?) is the highlight. Hypnotising. I like how some electrical hum is way on the back, it adds to the otherworldliness of the piece. ‘Shoulderrr’, the last track, sounds like an 80’s cybermen doing drugs and then raiding Jean Michel Jarre’s studio, plugging all instruments in a daisy chain and playing with the “time” element of the delay. Strange but fitting end.

I really like this one. It’s a very experimental affair, more like musical passages than music in the usual meaning of the word. Still, there’s something in these musical doodlings (swear I don’t mean it as diss) that makes it very nice and dreamy, like a lucid dream.

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