There is something invigorating about hearing a release that manages to sound stridently dense, yet correspondingly profound. This is where I begin to laud Conjoined, the latest collaboration between Ukrainian composer Heinali and American spoken-word artist Matt Finney. With musical influences ranging from My Bloody Valentine to Nadja, and lyrical inspirations from Raymond Carver to David Lynch, this EP's outcome will only be determined by listening to it.
On Conjoined, Heinali and Matt Finney display a side of themselves that hasn't been expressed in either of their bodies of work. Heinali's compositions go beyond their usual lengths, incorporating dirgy chords, echoing guitar shrieks, and aggressive drumming. Matt Finney's narrative is based on a past relationship that needed to end, though by the same token had to continue. Given this situation, Finney's hushed and raspy delivery brings paints a gritty image onto the instrumentally dark and desolate canvas, depicting themes of suicide, regret, separation and catharsis.
Heinali and Finney bring forth a dusky and monolithic 24 minutes that refrain from unnecessary builds, compositional flaunting, and the overuse of bells and whistles that plagues contemporaries who fall under the "post-rock" category. Conjoined unleashes its struggles from the very start and places them at the conceptual forefront. The beauty lies within the EP's realism, which is evident in every nook and cranny.
[Heinali and Matt Finney Myspace]
[Buy/Download Conjoined from Bandcamp]
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