Cassette Review: A Wake A Week "Twelve Days" (Still Heat Recordings)

[£3 // Edition of 50 // https://stillheatrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/twelve-days]

I'm never quite sure what to tell people when I say that music reminds me of the apocalypse.  What I think of as being the apocalypse might not be what you think of as the apocalypse.   Perhaps you want to go out with dubstep and dropbeats or death metal-- I don't really know.    But "Twelve Days" has this feeling of being post-apocalyptic to it that I very much do enjoy.   It's ambient in the sense that it can paint those pictures for you, but also those pictures tend to be of a barren wasteland-- like something out of the "Mad Max" series but without any people.

A Wake A Week (which is not "Awake A Week", mind you) begins this cassette with ambient drone of sorts and background talking.   The voices- though it might only be one voice- have this being pushed far into the background quality to them that made me question at first whether or not they were coming from the cassette or outside as I didn't listen to this with headphones the first time through and my windows are all open (And people have been outside a lot lately for some reason, which annoys me)  But I definitely also must recommend listening to this with headphones on at some point.

Within the sound which makes its way into being piano-based is a certain type of sadness.   It's desolate.   I don't know how one can imagine this as being anything other than post-apocalyptic based upon the depressing mood it presents, but I suppose if you're going through some hard times you could even just say that it's like A Wake A Week is looking into the emptiness of your very soul.

The overall feel is quiet- very understated- and it can even get into this X-Files sort of eerie way but still, not too far away from the sounds of death and devastation.    It has that "Mad World" sense to it but mostly because that is my go-to song for dark pianos such as this.    I feel like I hear pianos like this every once in a while and yet whenever I do I can never remember who to trace them back to exactly but that's okay because it just gives it more of that end of the world feel because it's like listening to this erases away all other traces of musical history.

To wonder when would be a good time to listen to this would be a question I cannot answer.   It's got that post-apocalyptic vibe to it, but obviously if you wait until then it will be too late to listen to it.   Though I do imagine some scenario where there might be one person left alive and that person finds a Walkman with working batteries and is walking around listening to this cassette, which would make a nice visual piece but you'd have to find somewhere to shoot it and I don't know about that personally but, yeah, I'd watch it.   Until then I'll just listen to this and create the images in my own mind.