Roseland “So just fade into the shadows” With Azam Ali & Tyler Bates
Roseland
“So just fade into the shadows”
With Azam Ali & Tyler Bates
By Ian Browne Shamrock News
A title harking back to the ghostly badlands of the eighties, at first glance your thirst for familiarity may suggest Siouxsie & the Banshees, Tori Amos in a surly mood, or Curve. Birthed within a genre known as ‘Darkwave Rock’, or call it indie-sonic, industrial; I’d like to call it Goth; I just did in fact. This isn’t the first time I have reviewed Azam Ali, I fell for her talents via Deb @ Lismore’s Music Bizarre and I kinda felt this album nearing, even though it was released in 2007. Azam’s tunes include Middle Eastern- modern trance, to medieval requiem, her wind-snaking black fuscous attire suggests a history cloaked in the alluring, passive side of the dark arts. With Siouxsie Sioux’s infatuation with Cleopatra- paraphernalia, and The Sisters of Mercy’s Egyptian hieroglyphics- accompanied by the masterful Ofra Haza in the all-conquering ‘Temple of Love’, the inclusion of Azam Ali’s Persian sufi-antiquities surging into the ether was a spawning within surety.
“I could tempt your shadow out of its prison”…
Tyler Bates produced this album, one that I find both interesting and soothing. To those who don’t understand Goth, to me it’s never been about moping about feeling sorry for ones self. Sure, there is sadness attached, but I find this sound ultimately calming and empowering. Moody, yes, but tis a creative sound that both feeds and relaxes an energetic mind, particularly one that has gained the night’s wisdom from the street. An album of variety with beautiful guitar sounds, this album’s ambiance is subtle in communication, where its twilight-beckoning is engulfing but never oppressive. Reminiscent of Joep Smaling’s ‘Foundation of Hope’s’ dire requite, the ‘Reaper’s Crown’ allows Azam Ali to enter into this mournful lament with her most favourable of NIYAZ hypnotism. Azam’s vocal range can go anywhere really, and favours well with that all-confident hollering of time’s disregard to barriers, calling out across the landscape while illuminating the feckless - which feminine Goth delivers so boldly. The song ‘Believer’ beautiful, the guitar in 'Light the Stars' nostalgic.
'Hollow Feel' enters your world with a polite wink to trip-hop Portishead, and that surely can’t be a bad moment, right? 'Forty One Ways'' to die sounds gruesome enough, but again Azam’s drifting caress reassures the restlessness of the soul. 'Bitter Days' is powerful and addictive with its fabled alert to danger and edgy power-chords. …“Baby it’s a freefall from grace!”…this album from earlier times, along with the release of The Jezabels’s ‘Synthia’, well, I’m just so glad romantic femme-Goth remains by my side. Niyaz with Azam Ali released The Fourth Light in 2016, it’s Afghan folk YOUTUBE clip tis visually appealing, while ‘Roselands’, this alluring repertory, such dark charms will continue to entangle many.
