I have never before heard anything quite like this album. And since I first listened to it at a friend’s urging this past weekend, I find myself returning to it again and again. It resists description, yet compels a response; it’s utterly fresh but feels like it’s been around forever.
Working as a loose creative collective since the mid-1980s, Liverpool’s Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus have consistently pursued what they describe as “echoes of the sacred” in their work, striving to access a sonic space where transcendence can invade a stiflingly measured-out world. On their fourth album Songs of Yearning, they’ve discovered new room for rumors of glory to run, and the result is uniquely powerful, its resonance strikingly amplified by the shadows of doubt that now openly stalk our lives.
RAIJ’s music calls to mind much that I’ve heard and loved over the years — abstract soundscapes by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno; the “holy minimalism” of composers Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki; the sparse, charged post-rock Talk Talk found with Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, to name a few. But comparisons to other artists fall short of describing Songs of Yearning’s rich mix of reticent modesty and bold experiment. Dissecting the music into its component parts — a breathtaking gamut of sound sourced from liturgy, folksong, chamber music, pop & rock of all stripes, ambience, industrial noise, found dialogue and much more — won’t do the trick either. The only way to catch the breadth and depth of what’s here is to dive in:
Short and relatively direct as it is, “Celestine” unfolds the Revs’ approach with inviting clarity. The simple acoustic guitar pattern and the female vocal in French doubled by bells — they’re straightforward enough. But that flute — is it slightly out of tune, or carving out its own tonality? The acoustic bass and harmony vocals — how is it they sound now consonant, now dissonant, flickering in and out of sync by the second? And in the end, each layer goes its own way, ever so gently drifting apart harmonically and rhythmically, but still bound up in an organic, contemplative whole.
Continue reading Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus, Songs of Yearning
Spirit of Cecilia 
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