Conquering Animal Sound - Kammerspiel

Conquering Animal Sound have made me take pride in my intuition at the time of guessing which unknown band is going to be special. This duo now based in Glasgow has been showing tiny bits and bobs of their potential for months, promising an album quite unlike any other, and if I were to be entirely honest, there shouldn’t be much pride to take into thinking these two would make big things. It seemed obvious from day one.

Upon receiving my copy of Kammerspiel, their debut album, I’ve been unconsciously thrown into a musical conundrum. It took me only a single listen to start feeling certain raw emotions transmitted by each and every track that create a certain peace and calm about each and every thing around you. At this point, listening to anything else simply didn’t enter the spectrum of possibilities, while thinking of writing a single word about anything related to music seemed like a herculean effort.

The reason why this has happened to me is due to a number of things that have to be experienced in order to explain, but in an attempt at converting them into words, I will lay them out here.

The sound of Conquering Animal starts from scratch, it builds every single note from an abstract place without borrowing a thing from any other genre, band or artist known. It may be pop music at times, very accessible, simple and gentle - but it’s not quite it. At times it’s electronic, with curious bits and bleeps that give a certain volume and presence to it all. Sometimes it’s not music, but life, with those simple, raw and immature sounds created with toys and instruments that were not quite made for making music. It’s this amazing array of peculiarities, adverbs, instruments and skills that make this an amazing album.

Its beauty can sometimes feel rough, like an unpolished gem, due to those electronic parts and odd instruments that may not seem like the best choice and yet it affects the record in an extraordinary way, evoking old memories, waking up emotions and simply sounding genuine, real. Then, there is that mellow and sugary voice that works as a natural sweetener for the most bitter of days, stealing your breath from the first second with such tracks as Maschine, Wasp, Flinch… it seems unreal, like a mythological creature or folk tale that no one believes in anymore, but you desperately try to hold it and never let it go.

I’m not sure if any of this makes sense at all, but the truth is I am still in that conundrum of which I do not know the solution, nor am I very interesting in learning how to get out of it. I was increasingly sure that Conquering Animal Sound would achieve something quite special and in the end, it is something more than special. Conquering Animal Sound sound like Conquering Animal Sound. And I love it.