It is a rare thing for us to review multiple albums from the same label back to back here at Stone in Focus — let alone just a couple of days apart — but when it comes to one of our favourite recent discoveries, Janushoved, we're willing to make some exceptions. With a singular and incomparable aesthetic vision carried across their entire catalog, and a roster of hard to define musicians that cover a landscape of otherworldly sound and texture both vast and impossibly dense, each release from the Denmark based tape label teems with it's own uniquely captivating power, like mystical relics found buried amidst the ruins of an ancient city. Esprit De Corps, the newest album from Janushoved's Hercegovina, is an album that stirs with the benevolence of a dark and ancient god, the listener forced to take a step back and simply marvel at the sheer scale of power on display, the potential for salvation through love and forgiveness — or alternatively, that of utter, destructive annihilation — existing in equal measure.
As if sucked through the turbines of a massive jet and spat out the other side, the mutated beats and monolithic drones of Esprit de Corps pour from the speakers in a blistering jet engine inferno of purifying noise and fire that tears through the listeners mind like steel-wool, leaving it feeling raw and exposed. Spectral voices call out in restrained shouts through a haze of rippling distortion and crackling cicada song on track two (a quick note, every track on the album is labelled Untitled, so for the sake of clarity in this review, I will be referring to each song by track number), while track three pulls an arsenal of corroding chimes and rusted bells from the very earth, weaving a ringing tapestry of sound that transports the mind to a place of vibrating energy and altered physics.
Despite a focus on texture and atmosphere, structural elements such as rhythm aren't foregone on Esprit de Corps so much as re-appropriated and approached from new and unexpected angles. The chaotic drum machine crashes on track three are triggered in seemingly random rapid-fire bursts, not necessarily with any clear rhythmic intention, but employed rather as a sort of narrative tool — just one of many elements of the album used as an obstacle to stir the listener from the comforts of passive listening — the constantly evolving soundscapes forcing the listener to engage with the music fully and without compromise
Blanketed in a thick atmosphere of dread and tension, the feeling of some volatile force barely contained permeates the entirety of Esprit de Corps with the threat of unchecked, destructive release constantly looming overhead, track four sampling what sounds like the loud protests of an angry mob on the very cusp of some explosive confrontation.
This tension, despite threatening at times to completely crush the listener under it's enormous weight, lets up at just the right moments — the ascending synths of track six floating weightlessly like a sheet of drifting silk in a calm wind, pitching and diving in the effortless, slow motion flight patterns of a seabird. Listening to Esprit de Corps might feel at times like being at the complete surrender of a powerful and emotionally impulsive child-god, but every child — even the most horrifying — has their own moments of stillness and kindness. And it is precisely these moments, despite all of the screaming and biting and crying that you may have endured along the way, that makes the entire journey seem worth it in the end: a path of chaos and dissonance that, despite all of its hardships, leads ultimately to a place of peace and tranquility.