The Clauberg Opera - The Death of this City By Michelle Dee

Is The Clauberg Opera's foreboding CD title, The death of this city, prophesising the end of Hull? It could be describing the very nature of urban society where all cohesion is lost to poisonous, suspicious, insular, ideologies. When does a city actually die? When the money runs out? When law and order no longer work? When the inhabitants no longer share common norms and values, or is it something else?

In some far off sun baked Eastern town a call to prayer can be heard emanating from minarets then the exotic sound is lost amongst a barrage of industrial noise. Uneasy listening, where nothing is laid out on a plate. There are no lyrics, no sing along choruses. At no point do you feel cosy or familiar with this strange, hybrid of mechanised sci-fi sound.

In the second track the coming of the waters, echoing bass lines are repeated over and over again. The track is relentless and continues for over seven minutes blowing accepted musical conventions out of the water. You the unsuspecting listener are left to wait, wondering when and where this mind-altering experience will end. Long after the cacophony of instrumentation has subsided the hypnotic bass line has become forever imprinted onto your synaptic pathways.

Pushing cognitive boundaries as well as musical, the five-track E.P. invades your safe world and asks you to open the doors to the darker recesses of the human mind. The Clauberg Opera challenges you to accompany them on an uncomfortable journey through panoply of ever bewildering soundscapes.

They could be the result of sound art experiments left unattended and allowed to grow and evolve. Taking snippets of both historic and popular culture, life is breathed into the entity. Then, by monstrously distorting and twisting the known and unknown a new genre defying form is created. Somewhere a radio crackles to life. Winston Churchill can be heard warning the nation of the new threat to National security. There is the sense of a conflict between the old and the new being played out in an aural arena.

The Clauberg Opera presents an awe-inspiring yet alarmingly abstract canvass on which, through introspection, form and meaning are there to be derived. Hidden within are moments of perfect clarity, chords like heartbeats bring brief respite, before you are once again assaulted by wave upon wave of incomprehendable sounds. .

There are a few tell tale signs of the musical gene pool from where this new life was formed. It bears some of the scarred tissues of Joy Division but with Future Sound Of London (Dead Cities era) post-modern minimalism. Fathered by Germanic militants, intravenously fed Cradle of Filth then the fleshy pulp ripped bloody and dripping from the womb of Muse.

Only time will tell whether these pioneers of musical experience will prosper and flourish under the harsh light of media exposure.

One thing is for sure though while there are artists such as The Clauberg Opera willing to take chances and create thought provoking new music there is hope for our beleaguered city.

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