I’m pretty much lost for words right now.  The piano in the opening track “This Land” is straight out of “The Calm at the Edge of the Sea“.  This whole album makes me very nostalgic for a time when I was lost in the ethereal space of Mendocino and Fort Bragg, creating and divining art through means that I now can look back upon and understand, but never reinvent.  I feel like the high water mark of my 20s is set by the force which was bringing together “The Calm at the Edge of the Sea” and everything else before and after has been beside a hidden point that stands stronger than ever.  “Hirror Enniffer” brings dead memories to the surface of my mind, like a body in an iced over pond at springs thaw.

Although it’s not the artists intent, for those who have seen “The Calm”, this album is very essential, it’s a companion piece, as if the credits have rolled but the theater is still dark, and this is what you are forced to live with.  Murder is art, art is beautiful when it brings tears.  For reasons that you must understand this is the best album I have heard this year.  Good job Faith.

There is light around the next bend.

If you want more information on the band go to their myspace.  Mamiffer.

Faith from Everlovely Lightningheart, the band that scored the film I directed “The Calm at the Edge of the Sea” apparently has a great album out.  While tired, cross eyed looking at reviews on Pitchfork I came across Mamifer. Mamifer is Faith Coloccia’s brainchild, and she actually wanted her credit in “The Calm” to be Mamifer. 

The album got a 7.5, and Pitchfork also gave a shout out to “The Calm”.  Very surprising and cool

Check out the review here:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/146449-mamiffer-hirror-enniffer-

OR READ THE ARTICLE:

Mamiffer: Hirror Enniffer
[Hydra Head; 2008]
Rating: 7.5

Seattle’s Mamiffer are as if Tori Amos went mute and post-metal. Faith Coloccia’s piano is at the fore, yet it’s grounded in pop simplicity. Behind her keys lie drums, small percussion, strings, acoustic and electric guitars, bits of vocals, and in general seemingly what was lying around. Coloccia’s collaborators are labelmates from Hydra Head: three-fourths of angular post-hardcore outfit These Arms Are Snakes, Hozoji Matheson-Margullis of the less contorted Helms Alee, and Aaron Turner of atmospheric metal giants Isis. These players are all unrecognizable here. Despite the oceanic distortion they summon, this is not an aggressive record.

Not overtly so, anyway– the pairing of piano with amplified noises often seems willfully odd. “Suckling a Dead Litter” wraps lovely piano ostinatos in industrial whistles and electric bass. Such background abrasions are distracting, but they also add context, relocating piano from its usual cloistered confines to, say, a steel mill. (Swedish experimental group Midaircondo have also utilized such juxtaposition.) There’s something delightfully wrong about a red-hot, My Bloody Valentine-esque melody warbling over a naked piano. It’s akin to the filmic device of calm foreground action with a catastrophe in the background.

Such exploration of depth perception drives “Black Running Water”. Diversions come and go– the glassiness of what sounds like strings played sul ponticello; bagpipe-like melodies; reverbed, gunshot-like drums like Mad Professor remixing Joy Division. Yet the piano remains stately, weaving geometric, Michael Nyman-esque patterns. Such weathering of sonic storms makes the piano more poignant. It’s frequently gorgeous; the distorted drone in “Annwn” hums like a giant vacuum cleaner, above which Coloccia unspools increasingly urgent filigrees.

This record’s experimentation is both to its benefit and detriment. It’s a textural delight, but it’s disjointed. The second track is a single tone that gradually expands into a haze of digital friction à la Nadja or the Angelic Process. The final track is a piano-less acoustic guitar/electric bass workout. While well-executed, neither track belongs. Yet such incongruity makes Hirror Enniffer interesting. The record doesn’t mandate how to listen to it. Played loud, its distorted bass could blow heads off. Played softly, its piano makes a fine background. (Coloccia recently scored the film The Calm at the Edge of the Sea.) It’s refreshing to hear piano stripped of its usual connotations– vehicle for virtuosity, prop for pop vocals– and instead presented just as an instrument.

* MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/mamiffer