Dead Raven Choir
My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind CD/LP
- Kigi Wa Haru.
- Our Mother The Mountain.
- A Rosebud In June.
- Genesis Hall.
- Bluenose.
- Sheep-Crook, Black Dog.
- It's All Right With Me.
- The Trees They Grow So High.
- Favourite.
- From The Stars.
The first thing to assault the listener when regarding My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind is D. Smolken's disregard, nay contempt, for the concept, practice and orthodox theory of recording levels. In his own words "Everything was recorded using a Polish stereo microphone from the 1970s, mixed and mastered using headphones of roughly the same age and provenance and a more modern pair of PC speakers which I got for free from a guy who paid about $6 for them." The instrumentation is similarly basic, being entirely bass centered, be it the double necked electric bass guitar of which Smolken is so fond (though he is now the proud owner of a triple necked model...), or the more traditional bass fiddle. "I already knew from working with Wolfmangler that metal sounds better without guitars. Cleaning up the arrangements made things clearer and heavier."
Raw, violent and organized, My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind grips the listener immediately and threatens to overwhelm them with its brute force. Clearly there is something to be said for the Eastern Bloc technologies that were so deftly abused, as this is truly a unique sound. Smolken has transcended the avant-garde and moved beyond:
Ladies and gentlemen, Dead Raven Choir has left the field.
