Album: Chalk White Nights

Stranger By Starlight is a collaboration between Eugene Robinson of legendary experimental rock band Oxbow and Anthony Saggers, the man behind projects such as Stray Ghost. The name alone summarises the sort of unsettling ambience to the music, along with an album title which I can only hope is a veiled reference to Boardwalk Empire. Robinson, the quintessential intellectual badass, in addition to debut book ‘FIGHT: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking’, published ‘A Long Slow Screw’ last November, a gritty crime novel so it is unsurprising in a way that the album itself is inspired by Film Noir and detective novels.

Chalk White Nights perhaps conceptually takes its cue from John Zorn’s_Spillane_ - a tribute to the works of crime novel author Mickey Spillane, who is said to be an influence on Robinson’s writing. That’s not to say that the two albums sound the same or even alike but, for my money, comparison is too tempting to resist. Spillane is a classic album (and a good introduction to Zorn’s vast body of work) that blends experimentalism, conventional jazz and a variety of other genres in a way that backs up the mood created by a reading of recurring character Mike Hammer’s words by John Lurie.

Unlike Zorn’s work, this album seemingly lay around unused for a while before it was picked up by Bad Paintings, who will be releasing the album in early September. Unlike Spillane, it consists of original material, a work of art in itself rather than an adaptation of existing work. Like Zorn’s work, however, this album manages to draw from diverse genres and textures to produce a homogenous, internally consistent piece of work.

Musically and vocally, the album is pretty varied. Robinson’s vocals take the form of spoken word, Oxbow style unintelligible groans and even some more conventional singing, which at times resembles crooning. This variety of approaches deepens the impact of the vocals never more than in ‘The Last Days of The Sinner’ where in deranged and forceful manner, Robinson stammers out the line ‘it rains on the just and the unjust alike.’ Another link to Zorn comes in the soundtrack-like quality of the music. Saggers combines nicely with Robinson’s vocals in a manner in keeping with his emotionally evocative work as Stray Ghost. The music in places resembles conventional ambient, even possessing a drone-like quality at times, especially on ‘An Organist’, and at other times recalls the likes of Bohren & der Club of Gore or even post-metal a la Neurosis, something especially evident in opener ‘The Night Of No Sleep.’

Chalk White Nights provides an overall rewarding listen, with an eerily emotive and sinister blend of sorrow, despair fear and anger. Its conceptual framework makes it one of the more interesting releases to come out this year so far and certainly one of the few truly immersive albums I’ve come across of late.