Review
Austerity
Self Titled LP

After some blind stroke of luck and the whims of fate, I picked this cassette tape up along with another because I saw it was available and had heard some whispers about the sheer magnificence of this release on the world wide interwebs (a few cryptic reviews and blubbering nonsense about its amazing-ness had me intrigued at least and now here I am doing exactly the same thing) regarding this self titled album from Austerity (a literal one man band from Italy); now, even though the words registered in my thick head that these mysterious peoples on the other side of the phospherent glow had written in effusive praise, nothing prepared me for the sounds that hit me when I pressed play on my cassette deck.

A recent acquaintance of mine describes Austerity as “Perfect music for dark, snowy winter nights” and, quite frankly, that is far from baseless hyperbole because the stark soundscapes that flow unceasingly from the speakers brings a cold chill not unlike the winter wind blowing through the cracks in old door while a steady snow falls in the dark; the imagery that Austerity puts in one’s feeble and sleep deprived brain is entirely concrete and breathtakingly evocative (this seriously could cause someone to fall into a depressive morass because of how isolating it can make you feel, particularly if the volume is turned way up and no one else is in the house), but that is not the sheer limit of just what the music here does. The recording has a definite physical component that is astonishing because at times you can feel the kick drum in your chest (for instance during “Ad Nihil”) with a disconcerting rumble that almost rattles your entire chest cavity, and there are moments when the noises sound as though they are about to escape from the stereo and inhabit real space (again on “Ad Nihil”); but some of the more mood affecting moments come in other places like “Lacrime” (the beginning with the “choral” like vocals and the lonely piano just kill me) and the subtle howling wind sounds (even the vocals really sound like blowing wind rather than anything of a human origin) of “Nacht Und Morgenrohte”

Austerity wins with this album and so do people that search out this dark and brooding piece of music; this album will certainly see its fair share of spins (or cassette plays, but I do not know what kind of quick term to use to describe playing the cassette, well OK sure I could just say plays of the cassette but that sounds so pedestrian) while the winter months creep along at their glacial pace and my household maintains its snowy winter night revelries. Austerity is a great album (not a single bad track to be found here, not one could be skipped) to get lost in and zone out while listening to the crushing slabs of icy moodiness, and considering how cold and potentially depression causing the record is, you would almost swear that it came from some northern country with nothing to look at save frozen wastelands.