Rumours About Angels - Birth Process
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The beginnings of the project date back to 1999, when Jarosław Kubicki (graphic artist, photographer, graduate of Academy of Fine Art in Gdynia) created several, casual works within the faculty of painting. Two years later, quite known in Poland Bartosz Hervy began to plan the conceptual creation, which partly would be based on the aforementioned Jarosław Kubicki’s works. The project started off in the second half of 2004. The premiere performance took place in St. John’s Church in Gdynia in 2005. 17th of August 2009 is the date of Rumors About Angels’ debut with the album ‘Birth Process’, released by Alchera Visions label, in amount of 444 digipack cd’s.
The album makes a very dark and grim impression on the first glance – packed in black cardboard with a single little feather on the cover. The album’s title ‘Birth Process’ clearly indicates, that the artists wanted to indroduce a birth of an angel, by their 7 songs and 12 graphic works. Concept of the album bases on confronting contradictions – beauty and ugliness, perfection and deficiency, almightiness and helplessness, eroticism and anti-eroticism, silence and noise. The first sign of that concept is the feather on the cover contrasting with naked, imperfect wingless angels shown on the pictures inside the booklet. Visual part of Rumours About Angels can be described as an electronic collage, in which Jarosław Kubicki used number of techniques: drawing, photography, painting, scans of cloths, gauze or sheets of steel, drawing with inked feather, smearing with paintbrush. Although so many techniques were combined together, the visual part of Rumours About Angels doesn’t lose it’s coherence. We have a series of pictures presenting figures in many varied poses and surroundings, connected in conceptual composition, which on the other hand can exist as individual pictures. Each song has at least one picture ascribed.
Big advantage of the album is that during listening to the music and going thorough the graphical works, the feeling of stylistic and conceptual unity is not lost. It’s perfectly clear they weren’t put together at random. Tension is increasingly growing with every second of listening. We’re dealing with electronic mixture of industrial and ambient in very interesting and fresh issuance, lasting less than one hour and divided in 7 tracks (plus 8 remixes on the second cd). Album opens with whispered words ‘angel’ and heavy, bass, regular beat, which in the context of the concept sounds monumentally and mesterious. Second track starts up the atmosphere, sets the pace for vision of the album. Firstly, heavy, industrial beats fall back, with time giving place to classical ambient sounds – strings, waving pads, delicate melody, and then rushing drum-kick. And exactly with every next track there is a noticeable increase in anxiety; the vision evolves, and so are the accompanying emotions.
My favorite song appears in the middle of the first cd – ‘Wings Constructed’ (and I guess it was not just me who liked it so much, because five of eight remixes on the second cd are the new versions of this particular song). It starts with the whispers heard in the beginning of the album (just a simple artistic manipulation but it evokes a feeling of participating in some process). Couple of bars of calm sound effects mixes with rhythmic, pulsing and waving musical motive. It’s great to listen. The following track is bringing the pace down, but shortly after the listener is flooded with crushing, creaking, powerful sounds at the end of the album. The story contained in the track ‘Destiny of Agony’ accentuates the whole album, being a ‘the end’ to the story conveyed in the other tracks.
Apart from the concept, sound of the album is really impressive. We can here many various pads floating, pulsing between left and right channel. From time to time, classical piano appears, often distorted, humming and creaking. Listener may also enjoy clear, simple rhythms built by heavy, spacey bass drum-kick or by wheezing beats. Additionally, from time to time we can hear standard percussion rhythms (it is told that drum machine is Hervy’s favorite instrument), nice, warm bass-lines and a lot of gracing additives and industrial, noise interludes. In general the musical landscape is very diverse but still very coherent.
Also I like the idea that solved the question of the second cd. All tracks received a common title – ‘Reconstructed’ – to tied them to the concept of the original cd. Although, in my opinion, remixes play minor role or sometimes even disrupt album as whole, it would be pity to lose the opportunity to hear, for instance, the works of God’s Bow from Stettin.
The first remix of ‘Wings Constructed’ was made by german project called Mnemonic. Although the main, characteristic melody was retained, the rhythm became a little bit varied, the song is not as much rousing as the original version. It is more constant, more settled on the rhythm, what makes listening more placid. A real good job with mixing the same song has been done by God’s Bow. This version differs a lot with the original. On the foreground we have a female vocal, very light, spacey and incredibly touching. The best mix, in my opinion. The next versions are very rhythmic, club-style, which was quite predictable, taking into consideration the general, old idea of creating remixes. The song ‘Leaves Scars’ didn’t get a dance version (mixes are very rhythmic, but not quite danceable). The first one, made by Punish Yourself has been varied with additional sounds, which raised the dynamism of the song. While listening to the remixes, I couldn’t wait to hear how God’s Bow would present ‘Leave Scars’ (after so well done remix of ‘Wings Constructed’). And this one is also very impressive, floating and rhythmic and again there are some beautiful female vocals deep in the background. And although I am not a great follower of the idea of remixing such grand and ambitious songs and making them more danceable, this compilation of remixes presents itself really amazing.
Once I got immersed in the whole project, was really impressed. For a very long time I have not heard any project that would have put so much effort and commitment in constructing an album. And many a time this impression will make me come back to the world created by Rumours About Angels.
Tracklist:
CD 1:
1. Embryo Crawling
2. Loneliness & Incompleteness
3. Phenomena Tied
4. Wings Constructed
5. Martyrland
6. Leaves Scars
7. Destiny of Agony
CD 2:
1. Wings Constructed (mnemonic mix)
2. Wings Constructed (god's bow mix)
3. Wings Constructed (fgfc820 mix)
4. Leaves Scars (punish yourself mix)
5. Leaves Scars (god's bow mix)
6. Wings Constructed (forgotten sunrise mix)
7. Wings Constructed (attrition mix)
8. Leaves Scars (sadist mix)
The album makes a very dark and grim impression on the first glance – packed in black cardboard with a single little feather on the cover. The album’s title ‘Birth Process’ clearly indicates, that the artists wanted to indroduce a birth of an angel, by their 7 songs and 12 graphic works. Concept of the album bases on confronting contradictions – beauty and ugliness, perfection and deficiency, almightiness and helplessness, eroticism and anti-eroticism, silence and noise. The first sign of that concept is the feather on the cover contrasting with naked, imperfect wingless angels shown on the pictures inside the booklet. Visual part of Rumours About Angels can be described as an electronic collage, in which Jarosław Kubicki used number of techniques: drawing, photography, painting, scans of cloths, gauze or sheets of steel, drawing with inked feather, smearing with paintbrush. Although so many techniques were combined together, the visual part of Rumours About Angels doesn’t lose it’s coherence. We have a series of pictures presenting figures in many varied poses and surroundings, connected in conceptual composition, which on the other hand can exist as individual pictures. Each song has at least one picture ascribed.
Big advantage of the album is that during listening to the music and going thorough the graphical works, the feeling of stylistic and conceptual unity is not lost. It’s perfectly clear they weren’t put together at random. Tension is increasingly growing with every second of listening. We’re dealing with electronic mixture of industrial and ambient in very interesting and fresh issuance, lasting less than one hour and divided in 7 tracks (plus 8 remixes on the second cd). Album opens with whispered words ‘angel’ and heavy, bass, regular beat, which in the context of the concept sounds monumentally and mesterious. Second track starts up the atmosphere, sets the pace for vision of the album. Firstly, heavy, industrial beats fall back, with time giving place to classical ambient sounds – strings, waving pads, delicate melody, and then rushing drum-kick. And exactly with every next track there is a noticeable increase in anxiety; the vision evolves, and so are the accompanying emotions.
My favorite song appears in the middle of the first cd – ‘Wings Constructed’ (and I guess it was not just me who liked it so much, because five of eight remixes on the second cd are the new versions of this particular song). It starts with the whispers heard in the beginning of the album (just a simple artistic manipulation but it evokes a feeling of participating in some process). Couple of bars of calm sound effects mixes with rhythmic, pulsing and waving musical motive. It’s great to listen. The following track is bringing the pace down, but shortly after the listener is flooded with crushing, creaking, powerful sounds at the end of the album. The story contained in the track ‘Destiny of Agony’ accentuates the whole album, being a ‘the end’ to the story conveyed in the other tracks.
Apart from the concept, sound of the album is really impressive. We can here many various pads floating, pulsing between left and right channel. From time to time, classical piano appears, often distorted, humming and creaking. Listener may also enjoy clear, simple rhythms built by heavy, spacey bass drum-kick or by wheezing beats. Additionally, from time to time we can hear standard percussion rhythms (it is told that drum machine is Hervy’s favorite instrument), nice, warm bass-lines and a lot of gracing additives and industrial, noise interludes. In general the musical landscape is very diverse but still very coherent.
Also I like the idea that solved the question of the second cd. All tracks received a common title – ‘Reconstructed’ – to tied them to the concept of the original cd. Although, in my opinion, remixes play minor role or sometimes even disrupt album as whole, it would be pity to lose the opportunity to hear, for instance, the works of God’s Bow from Stettin.
The first remix of ‘Wings Constructed’ was made by german project called Mnemonic. Although the main, characteristic melody was retained, the rhythm became a little bit varied, the song is not as much rousing as the original version. It is more constant, more settled on the rhythm, what makes listening more placid. A real good job with mixing the same song has been done by God’s Bow. This version differs a lot with the original. On the foreground we have a female vocal, very light, spacey and incredibly touching. The best mix, in my opinion. The next versions are very rhythmic, club-style, which was quite predictable, taking into consideration the general, old idea of creating remixes. The song ‘Leaves Scars’ didn’t get a dance version (mixes are very rhythmic, but not quite danceable). The first one, made by Punish Yourself has been varied with additional sounds, which raised the dynamism of the song. While listening to the remixes, I couldn’t wait to hear how God’s Bow would present ‘Leave Scars’ (after so well done remix of ‘Wings Constructed’). And this one is also very impressive, floating and rhythmic and again there are some beautiful female vocals deep in the background. And although I am not a great follower of the idea of remixing such grand and ambitious songs and making them more danceable, this compilation of remixes presents itself really amazing.
Once I got immersed in the whole project, was really impressed. For a very long time I have not heard any project that would have put so much effort and commitment in constructing an album. And many a time this impression will make me come back to the world created by Rumours About Angels.
Tracklist:
CD 1:
1. Embryo Crawling
2. Loneliness & Incompleteness
3. Phenomena Tied
4. Wings Constructed
5. Martyrland
6. Leaves Scars
7. Destiny of Agony
CD 2:
1. Wings Constructed (mnemonic mix)
2. Wings Constructed (god's bow mix)
3. Wings Constructed (fgfc820 mix)
4. Leaves Scars (punish yourself mix)
5. Leaves Scars (god's bow mix)
6. Wings Constructed (forgotten sunrise mix)
7. Wings Constructed (attrition mix)
8. Leaves Scars (sadist mix)
