Quade: The Old Blue Last (March 2024)

Quade’s music fills the listener with a deep and primal energy, an ancient force which connects to the core of our consciousness and ebbs and flows with the rhythm of our bodies. The crowd all trudge in unison to the blows of their drummer, landing like the pace of a miner’s pick cracking down upon an ore, or the steady march of some desolate and enduring animal [see ‘Measure’, from Nacre].

The voice, always faint and ethereal, utters a series of chants which subsume into the music. A magnificent space is carved out by their thickly reverbed atmosphere, filled perfectly by violin strings that never fail to cut through the veil. At times we are swept away by long interludes of echo and feedback, falling into a deep trance before the violin’s brightly singing strings break our slumber like the morning sun.

Layers upon layers of sound are balanced perfectly in track ‘Circles’, all feeding into the same distinct energy as a hundred tributaries of a river tracing back to the source. Unsurprisingly, their discography includes titles which evoke the elements such as ‘Of The Source’, ‘The Balance’, and ‘Nacre’ (meaning the iridescent layer of a molluscan shell), with the latter depicting artwork of a fossil upon a mossy seabed, confirming the primordial influences in every aspect of their art.