Princip You Are Here | פרינציפ – אתה נמצא כאן LP
Environment and landscape are concepts that don’t always factor into the listening experience of music. It’s why critics sometimes use words like “cinematic” to describe music, which isn’t exactly something I grab for in listening to this album. The major credit I give to this Israeli band is the ability to create an inner landscape of turmoil and a claustrophobic environment with a more or less rudimentary setup. These songs are intimate, noisy, and fraught with existential stressors and even terror. Conscripted service (a beyond troubling reality in the group’s country) as well as frustration and hopelessness are explored in a direct way both lyrically and musically. Noise and deathrock templates are used and augmented to create something of suffocating and grim value. But environment isn’t everything, there is great use of melody between the interplay of instrumentation (including smartly used organ, saxophone, and the play between bass and guitar) that cuts these songs into the muscles of the heart. It combines a lot of flavors, including no wave influence, especially in singer/songwriter Dean Klein’s guitar and vocal work. The punctuation from track to track is pretty phenomenal, stabs of rhythm and vocal expression helping to wallpaper the rooms of gritty despair. As a whole, it creates a cathartic world that mirrors our own while helping to break through the horror of the day-to-day. An artistically cohesive and impressive album that begs for repeated listening.