re:mote voices

Title: Nad Spiro’s Fightclubbing
Artist: Nad Spiro
Label: Geometrik and Mess/Age

Nad Spiro’s Fightclubbing is obviously influenced by Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, a fact clear from the album’s title as much as the list of influences on the inside sleeve. Nad Spiro is the recording name of Barcelona based Rosa Arruti. This her second solo release is presented as a collaboration between the Geometrik and Mess/Age labels; Geometrik perhaps being most well for releases of Spanish industrialists Esplendor Geometrico, though this release sounds nothing like them.

For an album called Fightclubbing, this is a surprisingly restrained release, though throughout there is a certain charge that informs the album’s atmosphere. Which makes it one of those albums that when you stop and listen to it, try to pin it down, then it’s attraction is an elusive thing to quantify, yet it remains memorable, something that one keeps coming back to listen again.

As an album there are changes across the 11 tracks, with the album starting at Mrs Cranium Lectures On Phrenology and the more buzzing and humming composition, which gives a laid back and atmospheric feel, mixing in tenuous hints of speech. As the album progresses the pieces gain more density, more pulses and blips which form percussive lines, with strumming elements that suggest the presence of guitar. This brings us to the mid-point of the album and Spirotechnics, which is the first of the tracks that are particularly upbeat and bare more of a resemblance to a strong structure. Filled with a steady beat, and a more vibrant , streaming buzz of bass toned guitar. The voices are more prominent here, through a rough computer toned filter – making them more distorted and threatening than the ghost voices that went before. From there the next landmark is the title track itself.

The couple of tracks between being more stripped down than either Spirotechnics or Fightclubbing, though they have a certain mix of swirling electronic squeals and esoteric vocal mumblings that make them more pronounced than the first section of the album. Again Fightclubbing has something of a song structure, describing a certain defiance, a low slung punk potential. Which provides a slice of retro influence at the core, contrasted by the squeals and layers of breaking glass. The remaining 3 tracks are pretty much where the album is at it’s weakest, the two parts of Motorschiff seem a little too directionless and uninspired, and while Enigmo Helix picks it up again, it isn’t enough of a return to form.

Listening to Nad Spiro’s Fightclubbing one tends to remember strange atmospheres. Imbued with mysterious voices in a mix of curious sparse tones. That congeal into distinct soundscapes, with occasional hints of a more pop potential hidden inside.