For thirteen years now, the Montreal trio Big | Brave has existed on the fringes of downtempo doom. Within a metal subgenre that bows to Black Sabbath through decelerated riffage and gloomy atmospherics, Big | Brave makes such acts as Earth and Sunn O))) look hyper and fussy. They released three albums on the Sunn O))) imprint Southern Lord, in fact, before moving to Thrill Jockey for their previous two albums, and now the surprising OST.
Big | Brave songs are generally long and don’t often find their way to a second chord. They’re more like ominous pulsations accentuated by guitarist Robin Wattie’s plaintive vocals. On this album they’ve throttled down further, abandoning undue concerns about song structure in favour of eight improvised mood pieces envisioned as a soundtrack without a movie. The result is surprisingly, well, not cheerful, but not without hope. Wattie, guitarist Mathieu Ball, and drummer Tasy Hudson have largely forgone their usual instruments as well. Only bits of guitar are heard, along with prepared piano and synths, but the primary soundmaker is an implement crafted by Ball out of old piano strings and known simply as “the instrument.” Occasional percussion and voices seep through (no lyrics, though), and a variety of sounds of indeterminate origin.
OST came full cycle when the band commissioned Montreal filmmaker Stacy Lee to create a film for the finished album. B | B is planning to tour the soundtrack and film but, in the meantime, listening in a dark room is a serviceable stopgap.
Kurt Gottschalk is an author, journalist, and broadcaster based in New York City. His work appears in publications in North America and Europe, including Bachtrack, The New York City Jazz Record, The Red Hook Star-Revue, Stereophile, and The Wire and he can be heard on WKCR-FM and WFMU-FM.