WL//WH Album Review NO “Permanent Wound”
On November 12, our friends from Belfast, TONN Recordings, published digitally and on cassette the debut album ‘Permanent Wound’ by Montreal‘s own artist NO. It is a killer debut release by that Canadian one-man-band and it all sounds like he may potentially have needed a double album to unveil his whole original talent with synthesizers and to completely deploy his music. In only 7 tracks (call me greedy) it is like he didn’t say everything he wanted with his music, but it is also that at the end of the audition I didn’t only want to repeat the album, I simply wanted more of this masterful and so modern coldwave stuff.
The album starts like this; ‘Just’ is a force of minimal-synth-oriented coldwave music, like only a small specimen of what’s about to happen to your stereo, to your neighborhood, and to your heart…
You can’t say this man follows all norms and the tricks of minimal coldwave, you will hear the bats and the rest of the creatures of the night flying around your head in ‘Couper Le Cercle’ in another deathrock-meets-coldwave ‘decision’…
It won’t be possible not to mention the passion and the ‘preaching’ voice of mister NO over ‘Never’, a song of great inspiration in its arrangement and the sounds he is using. The same goes for ‘Cigarettes’ where he reveals some similar and kindred passions-on-synths all over it. ‘Burn Into Me’, one candid and utterly frank flirt with the darkwave case, a song so dangerous as the photo on the front cover of the album. A bit of a retro new wave dance-o-delia in the unscrewed entity of ‘I Don’t’, and then came the plain and so simple sonic belle of ‘Cancel’ where you’ll be dancing to it for ages. And that was it all as the record ended and I wanted a couple of hundred more of songs to listen to by that striking mister Canadian NO…damn, I guess that another round with his debut album would work, but no, it is urgent to us all cold-minimal-darkies persuade both Belfast and Montreal to start working on the next release for this surprising modern pioneer who uses his paraphernalia at will and who presented one hell of an album. Until we succeed with our plan here is ‘Permanent Wound’ by NO via TONN!!!
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Written by Loud Cities’ Mike
