Here’s a quirky self-titled album from House of Gold, a band based in Montreal playing the compositions of Isaiah Ceccarelli. Ceccarelli sings and plays drums and synth on the album, accompanied by Eugénie Jobin on vocals and synth, Frédérique Roy on vocals, piano, and synth, and Katelyn Clark on organetto, piano, and synth. The instrumentation should alert you to the fact that this might not be a standard band recording; furthermore some of you might recognise Clark and Ceccarelli as the names behind the excellent Landmarks album released on Another Timbre a couple of years back, which combined organs, synths, and percussion in drones and deep listening. So, with that in mind, we have an album of often obtuse songs which don’t always hit home, but remain engaging nevertheless.

The first two songs on the album set out some effective boundaries: ‘Wool Socks’, the first track, is essentially organ and dual vocals, and slips between a sense of drone and ‘classical’ songwriting (as in ‘classically trained singer stands next to someone playing a piano’) - it’s not hugely tuneful; whilst ‘Phenomena’ leans closer to traditional popular songwriting, with a persistent piano and a very sweet vocal, accented and interrupted by percussive hits, before ending with resonant, minimal drums, piano, and synths slipping around the stereo field. The rest of the album navigates a slippery path between these two positions. Indeed, ’Of No Particular Importance’, the third piece, cuts a line between the first two tracks, with a vocal line thats largely poppy, whilst the instrumental backing steers between direct accompaniment and more wayward explorations; it’s unsatisfying but also compelling. Tbis atmosphere is maintained in ‘Night’ which pulls a similar trick, though here the backing is more animated, with twirling organ lines and rattling, noisy rhythms from the drums. After a hushed beginning, ‘Étain’ goes through several sections, some equally quiet, though there are also passages that even take on a slightly proggy feel; ‘Why Are We Not Together?’, following, again presents vocals with a largely abstract percussive backing, though it later develops into a more droning affair. ‘Terre Noire’ places the drone elements front and centre, with dual vocals harmonising over a thick, shifting bed of synth and organ, before unexpectedly launching into a funky motorik section with solid beats, a synth motif that reminds me of Zeuhl bands, and seasick piano: unexpected, but great. The penultimate piece, ‘The Unattainable World’, features the vocals of Ceccarelli, who sings in harmony with Jobin and Roy, over a shimmering wall of modulating synths, with a very vintage analogue feel, and a guitar that sneaks in from nowhere; it’s perhaps the most subdued, and affecting, track on the album. ‘Blues’, the final work, commences with harmonising vocals against a slight, sparse background of what sounds like crickets - but I would guess is synth work - before thunderously exploding into another short section of beats that descends into free improv skittering as the vocals reappear.

This is a good album; it’s actually a successful example of that painful sub-genre that involves avant-garde/prog/experimental/etc musicians trying - and normally failing dismally - to make pop/etc records. That’s not to say that House of Gold is a complete success, because it isn’t, but there is a pop sensibility on display, and little  showy desire to remind the listener that the performers are indeed avant-garde/prog/experimental/etc musicians. So, there is very obvious musicianship here, but often it’s conducted more through sound and timbre than flashy melodic or rhythmic technicality. This still leaves the album somewhat balanced between the ‘classical’ and ‘pop’ schools of songwriting, and this is perhaps never resolved - but I think this tension is the album’s appeal. The tension is furthered by the lyrical content which is often obtuse and slightly formal, and I feel there’s a comparison to be made with ‘Blume’ from Einstürzende Neubauten’s Tabula Rasa which has a similarly formal feel - and indeed the lyrics of ‘Of no particular importance’ and ‘The unattainable world’ even echo the lyrical content of ‘Blume’; however, House of Gold never attains the grandeur or emotive quality of the Einstürzende Neubauten track, at the same time, there’s a microscopic quality to the album that effectively works in the opposite direction. This microscopic quality is also found in the percussion sounds which are beautiful throughout, often close-miked and given detail and resonances denied to standard kit recordings; the snare on ‘Blues’ has a wonderful decay which is either some physical rattle or an intriguing delay - either way it’s indicative of the attention to sonic detail.

Certainly, fans of the Another Timbre release will find much here to enjoy, albeit in a very different format. So, as I said, it’s not a fully successful coupling of song and experimentation, for my mind, but I also think that the tension produced is what gives it its power; you might consider as a comparison the most abstracted Au Revoir Simone, or the work of Annelies Monseré in House of Gold’s more hushed moments.