Jesu’s Infin­ity is a new album length com­po­si­tion that should more rightly be clas­si­fied as opera given the struc­ture and effort that Justin Broad­rick has given this lat­est taste of his unique style of rock music. Halfway through my first lis­ten I started won­der­ing what Wag­ner would be doing if he would was alive today, and fig­ured that if he had been asked to arrange Slayer’s cover of a Pink Floyd tune, it might come out sound­ing like Infin­ity. The back­wards delay-effected gui­tar of the “pre­lude” por­tion of this epic serves this oper­atic anal­ogy well. While eas­ing you into the expe­ri­ence, it at once sounds noth­ing like what comes after­wards while at the same time intro­duc­ing the themes and atmos­phere of you’ll hear through­out. The first act begins with a pum­mel­ing drum and heav­ily dis­torted gui­tar riff, topped with the dis­tinct pierc­ing high fre­quency gui­tar that Broad­rick has made his sig­na­ture. As the song tran­si­tions into the sec­ond act, we real­ize that Broadrick’s gui­tar is the pri­mary actor on stage. When he sings, you can hear dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters com­ing on stage to inter­act with our pro­tag­o­nists. A gruffer retro-Godflesh voice comes on to dis­play per­haps not the vil­lain or antag­o­nist but pos­si­bly the inner tur­moil of the main char­ac­ter. Bring­ing back this rarely heard vocal style into a Jesu com­po­si­tion is shock­ing but appro­pri­ate for a long con­cept piece like this. As soon as this intense sec­tion ends, we are treated to a beau­ti­ful inter­lude of ethe­real har­mon­ics with a slowly build­ing bed of feed­back and gen­tle gui­tar. This inter­lude pro­pels into the sec­ond half of per­for­mance, where things move much slower and ele­gantly, the vocals yearn­ing for com­pan­ion­ship the actor doesn’t feel wor­thy of. This tor­tured sec­tion feels like the por­tion of the opera where our hero strug­gles to bring about his ulti­mate goals. It’s pos­si­bly the most pow­er­ful sec­tion, the lead gui­tar melody repeat­ing amidst the distortion-laden land­scape, the drums beat­ing slowly. From the con­tem­pla­tive and hope­ful sound­ing end sec­tions, I can only sur­mise the story is resolved pos­i­tively. The lilt­ing gui­tar of the denoue­ment fades away into twi­light, leav­ing us to reflect about the infin­ity of strug­gle and sound that sur­rounds us everyday.

You can hear an excerpts from Infin­ity at Jesu’s Myspace. As an extra, below is a free mp3 from Jesu’s forth­com­ing EP for Mark Kozelek’s Caldo Verde Records.
“Deflated” from Opi­ate Sun (mp3)

Clark is one of the great heroes of the mod­ern Warp era, an era that some­times feels alien to the label’s begin­nings as a purely elec­tronic label, but still a place of unbri­dled cre­ativ­ity. Through his out­put, Clark clearly shows a love of early Warp and of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics in gen­eral, and in so doing upholds that cen­tral cor­ner­stone of the label. Totems Flare is per­haps the best exam­ple of his out­put, some­how blend­ing his entire career into a fresh set of music. I can hear the electro-acoustics of Body Rid­dle, the exper­i­men­tal struc­tures of Empty the Bones of You, the hyper-techno of Turn­ing Dragon, and even the play­ful melod­ics of his debut, Clarence Park, some­times all in the space of one breath­tak­ing song! And these songs shift around, to be sure. You can hear an artist burst­ing with ideas on every track. Take open­ing “Out­side Plume,” a sub­tle synth and radio noise intro gives away to a thick rolling bass line and crunchy drum beat, giv­ing way to an upbeat and swing­ing mid­sec­tion, before the full frenzy of the last third bursts through with it’s epic piano and 808 beats. The follow-up and best track, “Growls Gar­den,” reminds me the most of the feel­ing of Clarence Park, bal­anc­ing the happy synth melody with the more sub­dued noise that lies under­neath the beats. Of course, this song also has some­thing entirely new: vocals. Clark’s heav­ily processed speak-sing style works to an amaz­ing effect here, giv­ing the song an oth­er­worldly robotic pop song feel. This song spi­rals into dif­fer­ent avenues before it all comes col­laps­ing back on itself like a star, fold­ing in all the lit­tle themes it has built up through­out. The squelch cham­ber music of “Lux­man Furs” brings Clark’s exper­i­men­tal com­po­si­tion to bear on a wildly chaotic song of big ideas. As a big fan the acoustic drums sounds of Body Rid­dle I was happy to hear Clark weave this tech­nique into “Totem Crack­jack” before the song goes com­pletely elec­tro crazy and amps up the energy of the entire album. Songs like this make me see Totems Flare as a giant lum­ber­ing robot made of bits of cabling, drums, strings, and but­tons every­where, slow­ing mak­ing it’s way across the land­scape, caus­ing lit­tle earth­quakes in time to it’s breath­ing and clank­ing. I’m a big fan of the gor­geous way Clark ends the album with the flut­ter­ing tex­tures and flit­ting drums of “Suns of Temer” that give way to the ele­gant gui­tar outro of ” Absence,” a beau­ti­ful piece that sur­pris­ingly doesn’t feel out of place on this album. Clark is about tex­ture and layer, and even a gen­tle solo gui­tar piece like this closer feels at home amidst the heaps of elec­tron­ics and beats. My lum­ber­ing robot sits down and watches the sun­set to this song every day.

Totems Flare Album Sam­pler Part 1 (mp3)
Totems Flare Album Sam­pler Part 2 (mp3)