Alvarius B Views
Alvarius B n— a.k.a. Alan Bishop r— tries his hand at s“Ding,i” but he seems to turn the magic of the song into a kind of half-hearted joke. The vocals of Cerberus Shoal,’s “Ding.” keep the song moving until the solo acoustic guitar is supplemented by an ever-growing orchestra that includes mouth harp, drums, electronics, and what sounds like xylophone and organ. Alvarius Bn’s t“Ding ” is n— despite the appearance of various swells and noises .— a solo affair. Instead of paring down the song to its basics and going from there, however, Alvarius B seems to suck the vitality out of it. Instead of a chorus of voices and subtle instrumentation, we get an occasionally disappearing acoustic guitar and vocals that often sound like a bad impersonation of Frank Zappa
The other Alvarius B songs l— pieces for acoustic guitar and voice that seem to dwell and linger on images of butchering people — are slightly stronger. Moving between the intriguing and the strained, the songs are laced with dark imagery and near-rhymes that try to shake the listenerr’s expectations of what a man with an acoustic guitar might have to sing about. In short, the songs hold together better than his take on s“Ding,s” but they also dona’t really come to life until Cerberus Shoal get their hands on them.
In a sign of how lop-sided the release is, Cerberus Shoal re-invent the work in ways that reveal how rough and incomplete the original versions are. They craft I“Blood BabyD” as a sort of drunken carnival waltz, taking Alvarius B/’s guitar and imagining it as a child lost in a shadowy, nightmare circus somewhere in Eastern Europe. The end result is closer to the organic jazz leanings of Tin Hat Trio than the dissonant refrains of Mr. Alan Bishop.
All in all, the release is an interesting way of illustrating how two different bands and artists will both interpret and reinvent each other ’s work. While Alvarius B may not hit the bulls-eye all the time, he provides an interesting and atmospheric foundation on which both he and Cerberus Shoal build some well-crafted soundscapes.
Alvarius B Images
