This is a welcome re-issue for Martin Rev's sixth solo album To Live that originally came out on File Thirteen Records in 2003. The album was recorded at Cheyenne Studios in New York. This is a totally solo album, as Martin wrote, played and produced everything on the album.
This album is in a similar vein to much of his work with Suicide, sounding more in line with Suicide than some of Martins other solo works. I have listened to this album many times since buying it when it originally came out, so for me this is a familiar friend, if you haven't heard it previously it may still shock your ears. This version of the album doesn't have any bonus songs.
The album opens with To Live that has a motoric beat driving the synths forward with Martins vocals sounding whispered making sure To Live free and never let up.
In Your Arms keeps the propulsive beat, with spoken whispered vocals of love, lust desire in a keyboard driven ever repeating loop of music emotion driving echo laden wall of noise.
Black Ice has sheets of sound firing over a staccato rhythm that just won't let up. Gutter Rock adds a string sample to the far gentler beat and vocals, that could easily by Robbie Robertson on his Somewhere Down The Crazy River, although this feels darker than that, the strings add in a layer of beauty that makes this more accessible to non-fans.
Shimmer is cascades of sounds stolen from computer games processed, shot through the malaise, pulsing with large parts with no discernible beat, just the screeds of noise, until the buried beat slowly emerges once more, then disappears in the welter of shimmering whooshing sounds, this harsh miasma.
Painted is full of chiming bells discordant noises, a simple drum machine beat, vocal interjections for a parallel universe of sound.
Places I Go features guitar samples set against a motoric beat with slow crooned vocals making this in some ways the most normal song on the album, it has a cyberbilly feel.
Lost In The Orbits takes dance elements set against some scratching noises and tumults of noise surrounding encasing the vocals within the odd beats.
Jaded works around a xylophone sample mutating it with Martins despair laden vocals prismatic cacophony shaking us out of our torpor.
Our Roads is dancefloor beats, shards of synth miasmas, opaque vocals, that it's hard to sit still too, time for the dislocation dance to take over.
Search For Stone has tribal techno married to the motoric synth, as Martin leads us on the search, the endless Search For Stone, sounds clatter in around the beat deep in the well of noise.
Water has what sounds like a live drummer rather than a drum machine, it could all be programmed of course, the cymbals sounding like the Water cascading down, driving through our minds soaking us with sound.
The album closes with Stormy dense clouds of saturated noise rain down on your ears, keyboards sploshes, distorted vocal stream whipping through the mix. There is no shelter from this storm of noise that eventually peters out.
Find out more at https://shop.tapeterecords.com/martin-rev-to-live-3732 https://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-Rev/100041698226428/ https://www.facebook.com/SUICIDE.tribute https://martin-rev.bandcamp.com/album/to-live
