Helen Jewitt - Astrolabium
Who knows whether there is a direct reference in the band's name to a girl who was murdered in the early 1800s. In any case, the feeling remains, given the themes and mode of expression, that the three musicians have tension in their DNA as a reaction to existential malaise, eviscerating, acclaiming, presenting stories in which romanticism always has a crown of thorns in its sonic circuits. Their debut album is an atomic bomb, circular, stalking the listening souls, unleashing broadsides, screams, electric cables directly into the nerves and veins. A continuous explosion that takes the liveliness of post-punk and the emotional twist of shoegaze, for a disorienting result in which emotions, observations, cues and a large row of paralysis follow one another as these compositions intoxicate (pleasantly), leading to an impossible negative reaction: one finds oneself inseminated by their richness.
In some moments, the less neurotic ones (and deliciously desperate), one has the impression that the trio visits the possibility of a future in which to immerse themselves to explore the richness of calm waves on the skin of a wad of tamed anxiety. The result is a sublime hypnosis, a prosthesis, an invention that expands their present, to generate a future in which writing can be a bullet that goes around the globe. It is surprising how this energy is not linked to youthful boldness but to a conceptual maturity that brings these creations to an outpost yet to be understood: they are gestations, fetuses, hypotheses and flashes in search of a place to grow and only careful listening can give them the pretext of a suitable cradle. The themes addressed in the lyrics highlight the overall view, total involvement, a sense of frustration and a strong bond with the passage of time, the obstinate search to marry fantasy and the search for truth. They also plan a hypothesis of the future and the theatrical system proves capable, of large proportions, uniting the whole with the sound range that leaves no escape.
The sense of abandonment, given by the long notes (those so deep into the Shoegaze style), shifts towards that of struggle and determination, typical of post punk, all in the same songs, without having to wait for the next ones, for an effervescent duo that releases sparks of connections to a remote past that tends to be dead for the vast majority of the audience. This formation, instead, arouses feelings of redemption, compacting, regenerating the time that was, as a dutiful and magnificently successful commitment. Astrolabium thus transforms into an effervescent, warm laboratory, with dark colours in search of oxygen, a reservoir of the soul where the sleeping conscience is not expelled but infected, feeding the future with a hope that passes through nine compositional strategies that in the end will reveal themselves to be something much more important. An aspect not to be denigrated is that of a basin full of tears ready to invade thoughts but capable, at the same time, of creating streams in the sky: the vitality of the writing, of the dreamy (albeit melancholic) singing becomes a broom to climb on to visit the clouds. The Eighties and Nineties find a spiral where the juice, the nectar, the good and the true of those two decades is visited and reintroduced into the mind like a dialysis that allows us not to lose our memory. It is therefore not a convenient revival but a precise technique to bring our attention back to a place where nostalgia and judgment are at risk. And then this young band makes a leap worthy of a kangaroo, carrying in its womb the seeds of the future... The guitars are black flashes, the bass a moving crater and the drums a fire in the middle of a forest, to give, as a result, a film with which to cover our fragility. Songs that hearten, devastate, rediscover the pleasure of life without giving up on erecting a wall against the easy propensity to stupidity. Here then it seems like we find ourselves in a university classroom in which they study how to make the future credible: Astrolabium is the best possible professor and it would be a shame to miss this chance...
Song by Song
1 - Hearsee
A tide glides in the sky with guitars that create spaces and then an enchanting voice, a simple and rich bass line bring the whole into a chorus that kisses sadness and reveals meanings to be found under the skin of notes kissed by an underground flash…
2 - Dogma
Explosions magnetized in the nerves of this song that excels in workmanship and density, as they are sheets that slowly crumble finding the right stage in the apparently catchy chorus: the words are dynamite and prison that suffocate, like a necessary good to be delivered to the future, while the primordial post punk strikes the embrace of an alternative rock that closes the circle perfectly…
3 - Abigäil
The memory of the second album of Adorable becomes concrete: this song has the same black feathers of the English band, staying not far from Catherine Wheel, to then find an autonomy full of Nordic clouds in a soundscape that creates a farewell melodic from this existence…
4 - Noughts and Crosses
We remain in an intimate atmosphere, a whisper of the bass, the baritone chirping of the singing and then a heartbreaking flight, with guitars and drumming that recall the saddest Radiohead, for a result that seems to be that of waiting for a window to fall into the water…
5 - Miss Deverell
Brent van Rij's bass takes us back to Fields of the Nephilim's Celebrate, but with a completely different structure: a graceful guitar permeates Gijs Stuivenberg's singing, to then welcome a minimalist orchestration that ties everything together in an enchanting way...
6 - Mother
Psychedelia in flight: from the Nineties (the English ones) to the present ones for a dialogue that seems to sense an electric propensity for shoegaze skirmishes slightly put to one side. But there is a vibration, a snap that brings this song into the space of a complete thrill...
7 - Bauta
David Helbig (the drummer), moves like a robot on an electric chair, like the son of an Eighties indie rock who waits for his two travelling companions to be able to make the sound neurotic and the atmosphere agitated to the point of chaos that contains all the power of the band...
8 - Death of Romance
Nerves under water implode and it is a sad joy on the rise, in an almost free flight, with a slowness that allows the vibrations to find the perfect location, with an arpeggio accompanied by short but incisive electrical discharges…
9 - Burn it Down
We end up running, with the last composition, between sound bullets and extreme slides, with the most abrasive Déjà Vega in mind and a controlled anger in watts that become the flight of menacing pumas in the night…
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
6th April 2025
