Album Review: Belong – ‘Realistic IX’: The illusive ambient-shoegaze duo return, their deceptive power undiminished.

Things may come and things may go but the shoegaze dance still unravels. Thirty years on from a time when Catherine Wheel were possibly the most important thing in the world to a small herd of droopy fringed teenagers, some of the scene’s more prominent pioneers have been having another moment. Ride have heaved themselves firmly back on track and likewise Slowdive are definitively gaining new momentum. There’s even a new Seefeel album at the end of August, a band that has always followed the tributary into electronica territories riding a twirly guitar-blissed inflatable.

Perhaps it’s those more divergent shoegaze journeys that have delivered the most satisfying refreshment to the electric music world, feeding into everything from post rock to drone, dark metal to jazz fusion. What started with MBV’s experimental prompting filtered through to Stars of the Lid, Explosions in the Sky, Neurosis, Fennesz, Boris, LaBradford and on and on. It’s towards this abstract area of the shoegaze Venn Diagram that the illusive New Orleans ambient shoegaze duo Belong have always drifted. Their music seems to arrive from nowhere, marked by increasing time voids between each release, and then almost as succinctly Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones (a.k.a Belong) disappear.

Belong’s debut album, the underground classic ‘October Language’ emerged in 2006, four years after their formation. This ethereal expanse of guitar haunted, electric-dream music captured devastation and loss of a post Katrina world, with an emotive power. Two years later came the quirky (in Belong measures) ‘Colorloss’ EP, three delicately disguised covers of obscure sixties psych nuggets by Cleaners From Venus, Tintern Abbey and July. The last we heard from Belong was the more vocal fronted, Kosmische syncopated ‘Common Era’ their debut for Kranky Records in 2011. That is until now, with the release, once more on the Chicago label, of the third Belong album ‘Realistic IX’, so ending a thirteen-year pause.

On the surface it could seem that the new record’s long gestation has resulted in a pretty straightforward consolidation of Belong’s sound. Opener Realistic (I’m Still Waiting) strides confidently out of the speakers with all those key shoegaze trappings sounding sharp and expertly crafted. The fuzz/mute buzz chord fluency, the breathy, ghosting vocal, the unfaltering stomp of the drum machine all coax easy references to an MBV/ Sisters Of Mercy intersection and that’s before the classic churning, beatless closing moments. But there’s something more minimalistic, more structured and as such experimental being re-affirmed throughout this new statement from the Belong duo.

Consequently on ‘Realistic IX’ this exquisitely engineered template gets presented with various fine tweaks and tunings, each time guaranteeing an uplifting, head-nodding drive. Jealousy compresses the fuzz drill riffing to hypnotic, insistent level as it saunters along to a baggy shuffle while Difficult Boy pumps through a punky Suicide meets Loop work out. Perhaps it’s on Souvenir that Belong hit that air-punching high point, where the crisp, motoric pace, serrated chord drive and full-strobe zoom-guitar hook max out before taking the long fade to silence.

As focused as Belong are on exploring the possibilities of shoegaze/post-rock connections they also bring the more abstract and fluid to other parts of ‘Realistic IX’. Crucial Years surges with vamping chord cascades, following a subtle pattern while a subdued techno pulse flutters. More urgent and frantic, the swelling guitar torrents and fibrillating beats of Image of Love excavate similar sonic themes once explored by the under-appreciated Flour/Albini combo.

However, the most significant noise-ambient statements arrive with the album’s two longest tracks. Bleach frequently feels close to implosion, a purging white-noise drone of symphonic proportions transported by a mesmeric locomotive rhythm. Here the fade seems just that little bit inconclusive but in contrast the final track feels more completely resolved, AM/PM is sensational. Padding to a fulsome future house tempo, the orchestrated two note loop ebbs and flows as you enter some luxuriant post-rave zone. Minimal, mesmeric and mighty the song disappears into the ether as gently as it began.

We may be waiting a long time for the next Belong instalment but ‘Realistic IX’ represents another impressive marker from a band who amongst the devoted are justifiably adored.

Get your copy of ‘Realistic IX’ by Belong from your local record store or direct from Kranky HERE