Latest single ‘Gargoyles’ encapsulates such a style. A life swaddled against the flames, numb but still burning. What’s left is a collage of a life within such conditions, a composite of images, feelings and references swirling beneath a density of noise both digital and organic. Unlike many attempts to chart such a headspace, The Exit Bags refuses to romanticise the experience, or to pretend that some level of catharsis can clear the air. The sound is fitting for a record concerned with depression, evoking an unreal, disturbing mood that’s somehow both the sharpest and dullest edge. Take single ‘Shingles’, which occupies the gloomy space between drone and heavy rock, its depths filled with an insulating fuzz which even the screamed vocals struggle to puncture.
Both Bates and Wilbur have worked with stalwart label The Flenser, the latter working with acts such as Midwife, Have a Nice Life, Planning for Burial and others, and The Exit Bags aesthetic is very much positioned within this cohort.
One at once striking and muted, confronting themes of existential urgency with a subdued, downbeat air, as though each song is played from the next room, a clamour with a blanket thrown over it.Ī joint release by Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth, Tower of Quiet was mixed by Kyle Bates of Drowse and mastered by Mount Eerie collaborator Nicholas Wilbur. New record Tower of Quiet captures the mood perfectly.
The recording project of Michael James from Edmonton, Alberta, The Exit Bags operates at the intersection of a variety of genres, with elements of ambient, drone, noise and slowcore, complimented by field recordings and other embellishments woven into an ambiguous style.
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