SOFA
GREY (CONSTELLATION)
Sofa's five-year run as a band culminated in the recording of this full-length in the winter of 1996.
Tracked during overnight sessions at an East-End Montreal studio, the album is a shrouded, finely wrought song cycle of sensory overload and the sense of loss.
Mixed bone dry and with almost no overdubs, guitarist Ian Ilavsky (Constellation co-founder, Silver Mt.
Zion, Re:) cuts against the metronomic pacesetting of bassist Scott Clarkson and drummer Keith Marchand while Brad Todd's voice alternates between schizophrenic staccato bursts and a devastatingly intimate, densely lyrical, often half-spoken invocation.
One guitar, one bass, one trap kit, one voice. Grey is a mesmerising amalgam of slow core, industro-punk, primitivist math rock and post-hardcore.
"Like Slint and Big Black meeting for a Joy Division reunion" in the words of one music writer of the era.