For the uninitiated, some facts about the band Belong: (1) their moniker does not adhere to any degree of nominative determinism at all as they don’t “fit” anywhere, (2) they take their sweet, sweet time with things, and (3) they really don’t like to label their music as shoegaze.
Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones have been making music together as Belong since 2002, but this is only their third LP in that time. 2006’s debut October Language is a wonderful collage of soundscapes and experimental compositions that weave and ebb, rapturously conjuring up ideas of meandering nothingness in the manner of Tim Hecker or Stephan Mathieu. Its exquisiteness is juxtaposed with a suffocatingly haunting sense of melancholy, and it needs your attention if you haven’t yet had the pleasure.
By 2011’s sophomore record Common Era, there was a more defined sense of drive to the band’s sound. There were still hazy waves of distortion deep within an obfuscated audio mix, but there were also signs of – gulp – structure, and what might even be called “songs” (chord progressions, recognisable hooks and all!). “A Walk” has echoes of bleak early 80s goth like The Cure and Christian Death, while the splattering drums on “Make Me Return” sound like a New Romantics version of Joy Division. Common Era divided many as some saw it as a bold departure, others just wanted more of the same. October Language feels like serene disorder, whereas its predecessor was more linear, more purposeful.
The eight tracks that make up Realistic IX lean more on the Common Era template, but there’s also a melding of the sonic approaches of both of the band’s previous records here. Although it’s clearly *not* shoegaze (according to Dietrich and Jones, remember), any reviewer would be hard pressed not to mention My Bloody Valentine or the early work of Medicine as reference points. “Image of Love” would have been the best thing on MBV by some distance, for example, but that’s not to say that Realistic IX is derivative – it’s exploring the same aural boundaries as Kevin Shields’ lot, for sure, but in their own way. However, it probably works best as a body of work if you know something of the back catalogue and Belong’s journey to this point. In this way, the point reached feels more organic, perhaps even more wholesome.
Album opener “Realistic (I’m Still Waiting)” has a distinct earworm riff, with an almost pop sensibility to it, albeit one hidden by washed-out guitars and almost imperceptible vocals. The interplay between the cold drum machine patterns and the lackadaisical voice is interesting, highlighting the dualities at work at the heart of the record. There are many juxtapositions here, whether it be the territories covered by the two previous records and re-explored here, or the relative creative pull of the duo at the core of the work, that runs through the veins of Realistic IX.
After sitting with the album a while, you begin to realise that it flows in a different manner depending on your mood and ability to focus. “Bleach” is a blissed out ethereal wall of noise with a clipped, minimal beat behind it and this subtle element doesn’t always come to the fore as much on each listen.
The playfulness between freedom and restriction is central to the album as a whole, the dichotomy of structure and disorder resonating throughout. This is felt most on album closer “AM/PM” which would sit perfectly on October Language. There’s a nostalgic feel to it, and its shimmering nature brings to mind ideas of sepia toned film stock of nothing in particular. One main gripe here is that at a little under eight minutes long you feel robbed of really being able to lose yourself in the track as it easily could have been three, maybe four times longer.
There’s a directness to tracks such as “Jealousy” and “Souvenir” which is quite unlike anything Belong have put to tape before. The underpinning drums on both tracks add a sense of moderne kosmiche musik, and the chord progressions offer a sense of quiet optimism – something entirely lacking from the band’s output to date. The hazy production on “Difficult Boy” masks its post-punk riffs, while “Crucial Years” adds a Fennesz style sense of electronica that takes us off into another direction.
Not only do the flow and the mood of the album change on repeated listens, so do the inevitable comparisons to Loveless. As landmark albums go, few sound so disparate and apart from others under the same label. So, when you press play on Realistic IX there’s no denying that maybe this album is as close to Loveless as any other band (heck, maybe even My Bloody Valentine) have got. Yet with each listen these obvious comparisons fall away bit by bit, leaving Belong to explore the same territory but from a slightly different angle – same terrain, different path.
Realistic IX is a wonderful record on many levels, just don’t say it’s shoegaze.
