Creativity can be a calming and cathartic experience, as Jakob, the artist behind the Shadow Antlers name, knows only too well. When prescribed a course of pills by his doctor to help balance him out, he eventually realised that being productive, creative, and making music was a much better approach.
The result is Outside Belongings, an album forged of a weave of post-punk and darkwave threads, whose songs discuss themes such as escape from the conformity and restrictions of society, normality, abandonment, and what it means to be a hidden cog in the big machine.
“Trails” draws the listener into the album, a pulsating, industrial groove powering brooding thoughts and raw guitars. And as an opener, this sets the tone perfectly for the dense, gnashing, bruised, but in its own way, beautiful, music to follow.
“You Leave Some Sky in Your Hair” (great title, by the way) is a more spacious, darkwave groove, sitting somewhere between the alternative-dance world and the gothic realm, taught yet energetic, and then there are tracks such as “Dim Carcosa” which feels more like a collection of atmospheric drifts and dark intentions: cinematic, scintilating and seductive.
It is a clever and creative album, one that takes the spirit of post-punk digital creativity and ushers it into the current age, not so much reimagining the past but taking those sounds to their logical, contemporary conclusion.
But the real takeaway here is that modern solutions, for health, especially mental health, are all too often just adding to the problem, and music, art, …creativity of any sort, can be a healing process, something that occupies, focuses, and remaps the mind, but also a way to exorcise any dark or complex thoughts that feel good to get off of your chest, as the saying goes. And of course, not only that, as we see here, it can also add exciting new music to the sonic canon. I think they call that a win-win!
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