Obsessed with wolves and the latent terror lurking behind silences, Dead Raven Choir honorably represent the raw black metal wing of San Francisco's Jewelled Antler Collective. Eking out an acoustic Melvins dust-storm force-fed Metal Machine Music, Smolken, a Polish exile named for the grave digger in Corman's The Undead, inhabits the wilds of Texas, masterminding miasmatic atmospherics that initiate buried-alive claustrophobia as well as the beauty of a backlit spider-web. Accompanied here by Birdtree/Thuja/Blithe Sons favorite son Glenn Donaldson on splintered acoustic guitar and sundry stringed things, our dark-blooded hero whispers and rages from Rilke and A.A. Milne to Baudelaire and Hilaire Belloc and back. More Paris Spleen than Pooh Corner, when Smolken steps to the mic (which I imagine dangling just-so from a cragged tree branch), he conjures the lonesomest strains of folk, cabaret, and sung poetry.
His treatment of the poems can be mesmerizing. In some cases, accents are placed at odd or unforeseen moments, while others are read audio-book straight. His dusky rendition of Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Kings of the World are Growing Old", for example, follows the original text word-for-word, albeit with a strange, lupine hiss in the background. Others are twisted around with brambles (unless he's using cut-up translations I haven't located). "Beacons ~ Rubens, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Puget, Watteau, Delacroix" offers an elliptical take on the last three stanzas of Baudelaire's "Beacons". Smolken doubles his voice, initiating his own call-and-response between clipped fanaticism and drawn-out, dry throated whispers. His high-flung subject: "These, Oh Lord, are the benedictions. The tears, the ecstasies, the blasphemies, the cries of 'Te Deum.'"
With Smolken going off in the forefront, Donaldson's left to his own devices. And though it isn't clear who plays what, the array of sounds are subtle and wonderfully textured. There's an upright bass, I think, as well mandolin, banjo, bells and percussion. Structurally, choruses are avoided and besides the acoustic punctuation marks that jump from nowhere, there are zero build-ups: the endless skies above a plain, wisps of pale that hover inches above a cedar lake. It's all beautifully codified: One might have more background than another and perhaps another goes into different sorts of convulsions, but for the most, the pitch remains within the unplugged zone of bands like Badgerlore or Darkthrone. If you're more interested in Dark Raven Choir's equally enjoyable noise strain, you'll need to look elsewhere (I recommend the upcoming 3" CDR, Sturmfuckinglieder, which features seismic, totally harsh covers of Leonard Cohen, Garnet Rogers, and Townes Van Zandt).
Though words prove essential, there are a couple instrumentals. A squeaky cover of "Streets of Laredo" whips up Woven Hand burning in a Gypsy fire with a lonesome, warping violin. "Piano Practice - Impatience for a Reality" is a protracted set of random, dramatic plucks and bowed strings wound large through gaps of dead space bottomed out with the minutest rattling of Morton Feldman's bones. (Anyone interested in creepy ambiance and/or the eccentric appropriation of found materials, do yourself a favor and mix this with Liars' upcoming witch-hunt, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. Now get a walkman, wander the country at night, and have yourself a really fine Walpurgisnacht.)
For those familiar with Smolken, this new full-length won't surprise. What makes Wine, Women and Wolves special, beside the great title, is that it's the first non-CDR release aside from compilation appearances. Therefore, it ought to be easier to track down than, say, Eaten by Wolves, released in an edition of 7, or the equally out-of-print Lesbian Corpse Wolves, limited to a whopping 30 copies. For the new fans I should warn you now that most of Dead Raven Choir's extensive back catalogue-- 25+ releases since 1998-- is already out of print. With someone this productive, though, there's of course hope for the future. (As we go to print, there are four releases scheduled for 2004: Goating Shapelessness Theatrical Wolves, Death to Dead Wolves, Cooking with Wolves, and the anomalously non-wolf title, Dead Raven Choir and Never Presence Forever - Rozrywa Szwy Ciszy). And, hey, becoming a collector at this stage of the game seems an admirably obscurantist activity.
Wine, Women and Wolves isn't the most exciting of listens, and it won't get you out on the dance floor, but like a good horror film, the atmosphere's so finely intense, that even the most mundane creak of a door or a cat's innocent mew proves startling enough to make you scream like the feckless sissy you are, really.
