Set Fire To Flames

The cover art to Set Fire To Flames' Sings Reign Rebuilder shows a lonely, grim, ominous, monolithic structure in glorious fuzzed-out black and white. It is this apartment building where the majority of the album was conceived as an experiment by members of Montreal's finest psychological shadow exposing music makers, such as Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Exhaust, Fly Pan Am, Hanged Up and Undo. While certain elements from these collaborators are intermittently noticeable (i.e. the paranoid self-aware flying saucer guitar sound of GYBE!), the ambient character of the apartment becomes the main musician and conductor, with the members merely transforming their disjointed reactions in a musical manner. The building, like an abandoned mental asylum, moans and breathes deep; the long collected dust in the corners creak and incredible amounts of strain are heard between the long moments of near silence. Perhaps a ghost that inhabited the establishment wandered from room to room in a daze, capturing the events taking place. It is possible that many ghosts temporarily possessed the souls of these musicians, and through pushing the envelope with techniques of repetition and forced sleep deprivation, bursts of release came to fruition and these tortured but gorgeous spirits were finally able to find peace. This is a masterpiece of ambient terror and bliss, an organic tour de force of sound that compliments yet challenges your regular day-to-day living expectations - throw them out the window.