Ambient | Experimental | Rock
80%
Mouth Wound—Nothing Will Belong to Us (2023)
Details
Written, performed and produced by Trine Paaschburg. Released on Brucia Records on Thursday 27 April 2023.
For fans of Lingua Ignota, Diamanda Galas, Pharmakon, Hillary Woods
Band
- Trine Paaschburg—Everything
Tracks
- Burrowing
- Primordial satisfaction
- Dummy foal
- You won’t let leaving come between us
- She wants you motherless
- Is it all
- Esophagus
- Alike alive
- It surrounds you like a child
Review
Mouth Wound is a dark ambient/experimental solo project from Denmark, created in 2013 by multi-instrumentalist Trine Paaschburg. “Nothing Will Belong To Us” is the project’s first on-label album
Nothing Will Belong To Us (2023) sees Trine expanding upon those elements that have become a trademark of her unique approach to music and experimentation, combining the use and manipulation of analogue noise oscillators, acoustic drone, mangled violin and her heartbreaking voice with recordings based on her improvised live material accumulated over the past two years.
Described as “made of the very same substance of dreams and nightmares combined: a visceral release, so bodily and ethereal at the same time, balancing moments of deep melancholy with abrupt and brutal climaxes in which the peace is mauled by a cacophony of noise and guttural screams” this is an extraordinary album in every meaning of the word.
There are no tunes as such. This is a collection of noises; music in its broadest sense. It’s all dystopian noise with distant screams and an unsettling bass throb. Like the incidental music to a futuristic horror movie or the soundtrack to a bleak, Doom-like video game. Elements remind me of Mike Patton’s Adult Themes for Voice (1996) project (which I do try to listen to at least once a year).
“Both meditative and masochistic,” is how someone described this album. And “a refreshingly honest and scarily brutal take on experimental music: multi-layered and minimalistic at the same time, [evoking] a soul crushing poetry that is truly unique”.
Conclusion
Let’s be clear, this is not an album for everyone.
But for me, this is a hauntingly beautiful and unsettling album. There is a depth to the sadness and emptiness that the music evokes, and an always-out-of-reach-ness, constantly grasping at the mist that envelopes the listener, never quite reaching the destination. And yet, I found it strangely relaxing—it seeps into my unconscious and both calms me and holds me in the darkness.
Review score: 80%
Disclosure
Anubi Press contacted me inviting me to preview Mouth Wound’s latest album, thank you. I have no connections to either Anubi Press or Mouth Wound. I’m not being paid to review this. But I did get a free digital copy of the album to review which is pretty cool. Many thanks to Anubi Press, and to Mouth Wound for continuing to create fresh, exciting new music.