For ‘From Beyond Love’, Strings of Consciousness have enlisted an impressive list of collaborators to contribute vocals, with NY luminaries Lydia Lunch and Julie Christmas featuring alongside Coney Fanni Tutti, Graham Lewis, Eugene Robinson and Andeia Degens of Pantaleimon and Current 93 .
Over the course of seven and a half minutes, ‘The Drone from Beyond Love’ builds into a crashing crescendo, amidst which Julie Christmas’ Kate Bush-esque vocals wrench emotion from the gut. It contrasts and also compliments ‘Sleepwalker’, an eerlily atmospheric piece, with Andria Degens’ delicate yet fraught vocals adding to the dream-like quality of the piece which gradually evolves into a claustrophobic narcotized nightmare.
There’s a change not only in tempo but mood on the freeform jazz-tinged ‘Bugged’, which sees Wire bassist Graham Lewis deliver a laid-back croon against a backdrop of doodling brass and strolling, sporadic percussion. ‘Finizone’, featuring Throbbing Gristle’s Cosey Fanni Tutti is little more than an interlude, with a running time of under three minutes, before the album’s towering climax toward which the previous tracks have been building. ‘Hurt is Where the Home Is’ spans almost 20 minutes, and sprawls in myriad directions while duelling vocals from Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson and No Wave queen Lydia Lunch hiss, groan and wheeze through a dark underworld.
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It’s a fitting and impressive conclusion to an album that’s rich in atmosphere and often starkly intense. The impressive guest contributors are likely to draw interest from those who would have otherwise overlooked this release, and that would have been their loss. Even without the names, ‘From Beyond Love’ is a compelling work that deserves attention and above all to be explored.
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