Belong

Over a decade since Belong last lit up our ears, this sizzling (and much welcome) train of distorted shoegaze burns brightly like a lonely flame scattering obsidian shadows - the enveloping drones of 'October Language' are still there albeit buried beneath fizzing guitars and propulsive drums, driving this into an exhilarating and profound space.

The experimental duo enthral us with their acid-washed motorik drone with buried vocals. 'Realistic IX', the third full-length by the duo of Michael Jones and Turk Dietrich aka Belong, is both an expansion and excavation of their signature acid-washed songcraft. Bleached guitars, metronomic drums, and buried voices rev, swirl, and seethe across shifting gradients of haze and hypnosis, alternately driving and diffuse. Melodies surge closer to the surface, flexing their form before resubmerging into quickening currents of feedback. Elsewhere the elements dissipate into a dusk of murk and microtonalities, electricity liberated back into infinite night. Although it’s been thirteen years since Belong’s prior Kranky offering, 'Common Era, none of the duo’s rare synergy has decayed in the interim. Jones and Dietrich’s commitment to oblique states of motorik drone and liminal emotion continues to evolve and unfold, increasingly tactile and unreal, an alluring glow glimpsed through fogged windows at witching hours.