There’s always a temptation to lean on what is “real” in album reviews; the bricks and mortar, instruments, forms. ‘So Afraid To Show I Care’ deserves a different approach; with the emotional underbellies of the performers lying so exposed through the act of their craft, the album’s colour and texture speak more to an emotional transcription than a literal one. I’m compelled to behave the same, here.
My experiences with this music began at the performance in Olomouc, in the Church of Hus Choir on a pew, cold, uncomfortable, and emotionally shellshocked. I had not allowed myself a moment of reprieve from a psychological wound for months, and under febrile sonic mutations and bellowing organ, for the first time in forever, asleep or awake, the perpetual staccato clack clack of thought was overcome by the billowing release of white noise. More than once in my life, I’ve been completely swept over by a great wave, and during that hour or so in the far East of landlocked Czechia, I was once more spiralling underwater in the borderless, directionless ocean.
I had kept my eyes closed for the duration in Olomouc, in reverence of sound and space and in self-protection from the thronged crowd, sensory avoidance, but twice my eyes burst open; Theo’s sudden arrival on the organ, and at the unlooked-for cellist, George Cremaschi. Both aspects remain in the recording through Theo’s sampling and Klára’s improvisations (and the physical tape), and they retain their musical power. During the process of writing notes for this review, I listened to the album, motionlessly while travelling, eyes closed again, for several hours, and otteswed’s new and viscerally emotional role in the play popped my eyes open in precisely the same way.
Diverging utterly from the live show at last, it’s worth mentioning that the album’s surging lows and crystalline highs are sonically contiguous with Qow’s previous album, El Mossameh Sherine, both being mastered by Oliver Torr. The waveforms, especially for the collaboration with otteswed, read as deep valleys and steep, soft-peaking spikes, artfully designed to be blasted comfortably at full volume, for full immersion in that selfsame ocean.
In the title, there is a deceptive suggestion of emotional avoidance: on the contrary, the showing of care is done, but although the pair do start confident (tape click; “shall we start”-“yes”), the fear in the showing is palpable from the beginning. A piano echoes against tentative whispers in long, ghostly corridors. It starts afraid, but the message is there: “It’s you that I want, no one else…”
Despite (or because of?) the craftedly subtle and hesitant opening, the album confidently achieves everything that it seems to set out to, and it does so through the developmental bridging of Qow’s stuttering vaporous sound manipulations — hesitant, but not dispossessed of the deep sort of emotion that comes sweeping forth once unbottled — with rawer, more direct instruments from Alexander and collaborators.
These latter tap heartstrings like piano string hammers: Pudláková’s contribution (or that of a comparable musician of her instrument) is an essential to the potion of SATSIC: the intoxicating depth of the contrabass strings waver with emotion, encouraging the listener to open up to a swathe of emotions all somewhat configured blue by the instrument’s uniquely melancholic voice. Speaking of such things; the invocation of contemporary Arabic poetry via otteswed (whose name has been repeated many times on purpose) elaborates on the momentary (but oh-so-evocative) use of sampled English and Arabic.
So a perfect triad is made: at the crown, the matchless speech of otteswed, that is out of my reach to adequately invoke; the lower right is the guttural heartbroken drawl of the contrabass, thick strings, profound, mountainous, oceanic; left, the sampled-real (which include English and Arabic lyrics and organ, and much trickery and sonic witchcraft). These points carry different weightings alone, when isolated by their defining character, but the magic of the principal musicians on this record is in how, like liquid or smoke filling a vessel, they bring total balance to this mixture. Three of the tracks bear titles, and Pudláková features on three.
Thankfully, the continuous version is included. In making it a cut album, singular moments are enunciated yet isolated; I expect many will purchase only track seven. Yet streaming (not to mention DJing) demands it. The shallowness of the format is overruled by the performance’s original live and durational aspect: in this, it is complete, and therefore it seems somewhat wrong to disentangle from its inherent continuity. Truthfully, the album’s musical “fullness” — what bright fragments of perfection there are — is exemplified by the impetus earned from the slow coalescing of tattered fragments; a shadow movement of intent subtlety; the covert reaction that runs counter to any overt action; an equal and opposite force.
This is demonstrated simply and powerfully in the otteswed collab: off focussed, skewed, biased, his presence flits about the stereo field, but remains central and dominating in the consciousness. Spontaneously, Qow and Alexander combust into powerful waves of subbass, hitting in grouped rhythmic sets (precisely like waves themselves). The conceptual echo in the sound design and mastering: much of the album’s experience is in its spatial element — and with this knowledge, the fact that the Czech church has surely been the most appropriate location to date, to summon the kind of devotional experience this can provide.
With only a moment for a gasped breath, the culmination of the record, its title track, strikes; the quavering voice repeating the title, broken apart, flows out like flickering lightning. I’m yet to listen attentively to the whole record without getting full-body chills at this moment. It’s exactly what those cherrypicking herons will miss entirely, without also buying the build — and exactly what makes this a performance to be seen (and booked) live. All the fear and all the care, how it has all been shown — the balance of the album’s three poles -— is magnificent, spine-chilling, and self-evident. At the mountain’s cold peak, there is no wasted movement, and nothing without its shadow.
In the quick twilight slopes of the record, dark emptiness and waiting.
