F ingers – Hide Before Dinner
And now, suburban Melbourne bedroom malaise. Blackest Ever Black’s identity gets more complex everyday, like something organic, like a human being. It has the capacity to contaminate the artists it works with, to embrace them into its own parallel life and conversations: just like a human being. This little gem, Hide Before Dinner, comes from the Carla Dal Forno & Tarquin Manek duo who brought us that intense Mince Glace 12’’ as Tarcar last year on BEB (given the topical pain of these days, listening to those odd horror-exotica-soaked two minutes of “Refugees” now is something like a civic duty). They’re joined by Sam Karmel, who has collaborated with the two on what we imagine was this project’s pre-incarnation, Fingers Pty Ltd, which put a tape out on Night People in 2013. Hushed post-punk, melancholic and eccentric, but very discreet. It’s as if their new home and set up as F ingers has given them some courage to step out.
Hide Before Dinner could be defined as pertaining the most sophisticated, secret side of lo-fi bedroom sonorities – more insomniac than ‘hypnagogic’ if you will, more phantasmagoric than soporific. As the press release rightly reads, it comes “with flashes of horror”. Dazed, yes, but intense. It’s also a record diverse in character, and while reverberating guitars, post-punk bass and a plaintive, distant female voice remain throughout, across the seven tracks there a number of styles, atmospheres and sensations that appear and disappear. Although unified by a concept – a dark meander through childhood memories – it does swing, like festoons in the late-summer wind, and produces a catalogue of sonic possibilities along the way.
“Escape into the Bushes” is a distorted, rattly intro which only partly presages the complexity of the album to come. Here and elsewhere texture is key, the lightness of the ethereal but masterfully ‘unpretty’ voice is set off by jangling guitars and a huffy, slow bass which guides nicely to the meditative “Mum’s Caress After Trip”. Then, the album reveals a totally different face: “Tantrum Time”. It’s a dark-as-hell thing that has the ability to send shivers down your spine with its otherworldly pulses, deformed electronic voices and ragged loops. This aesthetic returns in the more introspective, but equally haunting “Useless Treasure” and finds its ultimate peak on the tragic shores of “Under the House Hard to Breathe”, which wouldn’t sound out of place next to something like Lycia’s early ‘90s offerings. The record comes full circle by returning to the lo-fi thunder of its opening track, returning to chant-like voices, watery synths and big jangly strums.
The visions Hide Before Dinner produces vary, but the music as a whole is hypnotic, and it’s a transporting, slow and trance-like listen, meant for intimacy, even meditation. And as a record made from accessing memories, it’s amazing how personal it feels, and I listened to this when moving home, carefully digging through forgotten and remembered bits of paper. After a third spin it dawned on me how profound the record’s narrative was in its delivery, telling the painful but necessary nature of my – and everyone’s – endeavours.
Flora Pitrolo
Tracklisting:
A1. Escape Into Bushes
A2. Mum’s Caress After Trip
A3. Tantrum Time
A4. Blissfull Cubby House
B1. Useless Treasure
B2. Under The House Hard To Breathe
B3. Hide Before Dinner