Review
Cremation Lily
Untitled

Bar none, I have never heard a more wondrous take on the violence of Power Electronics than the Untitled (which came in an extremely limited cassette run from the label Strange Rules) debut from Cremation Lily (a mysterious act from the British Isles). Without getting into the reasons or “how to’s” or “what for’s” of my finding this tape, suffice it to say, this has been one of my biggest surprises recently; and, as a result, Cremation Lily sits in an almost daily rotation on my various music paraphernalia (no, I am not joking at all).

Shards of noise, pounding industrial sounds, screeching, et al lay one of the most droning and hypnotically infectious just under ten minutes that you may ever hear and that is just in the first couple of minutes and then the mood and tenor of the sound changes from the frantic sonic assault to a more mellow and virtually serene aural pasture. Actually, this pattern is not dissimilar for both tracks on this tape as “Safety As A Womb” (where this pattern is more subtle but still evident) and “Funeral Lieu” (a more noticeable adherent to this pattern) find a way to both crush listeners with the opening acts and then subsequently mesmerize them with the hypnotic closing segments. As the last notes of the tape fade out, I consistently feel compelled to rewind and press play in order to hear (case in point, I have been listening to this for an hour and a half straight without stopping for a break); and just perhaps, this quality is exactly what makes Cremation Lily so infectious or so easily an object of obsession.

If I were you, I would kill to hear this and no, that is no joke; there might not be a more obscure but rewarding release to track down for quite a while, and, given that statement, extremely worth clamoring for a repress or reissue of some sort so that you too might be able hear this because this tape is exactly that good. Cremation Lily offers one hell of an opening salvo onto the world with a fine untitled tape begging only one single question; just what will this outfit unleash next?