Review: The Brackish/Codex Serafini

It was always an odd choice of name – The Brackish – with connotations of staleness and a nasty taste, but time has shown it to be ironic. There’s a fresh sparkle to their brand of exhilarating post-rock that even the last two years couldn’t dim. This gig launched their latest album Atlas Day released by Brighton’s Halfmeltedbrain Records and presenting a new set of instrumental numbers for us to get to know and love.

Codex Serafini (pic: Tony Benjamin)

But to open things label-mates Codex Serafini shuffled onstage under cover of darkness in matching nighties, faces shrouded in veils or hair (or both) with their centre-stage vocalist facing backwards throughout. Their sound, once unleashed, was a swathe of overdriven guitar over assertive two-fisted drumming and rolling bass. The vocals were some kind of howling incantation with occasional saxophone enhancements and it all added up to a kind of metal-minded psych-hippy thrash, like the looser moments of Gong with a whole lot of extra pedals. Their name derives from a cult book – the Codex Seraphinianus (wonder why they shortened that?) famously written in a made up language and it may be they used that for their lyrics because I have to confess to not catching a single word of them. But it certainly got the front row headbangers doing their thing, whatever.

The Brackish – Neil Smith (guitar), Matt Jones (drums). (pic: Tony Benjamin)

And then there was the comparatively hairless Brackish heading straight  into the clear and hard cadences of album opener Deliverance, a weave of trademark cross rhythms, shape shifting dynamics and sudden mood changes. As ever it was striking how precisely the two guitarists – Neil Smith and Luke Cawthra – deployed the sonic vocabulary of their instruments, steering the music from the cosmic cowboy of Leftbank to the desert drifting of Pretty Ugly or the electro-meanderings of Dust Off.

The Brackish – Matt Jones (drums), Jacob Tyghe (bass) (pic: Tony Benjamin)

Familiar echoes of Captain Beefheart – a regular favourite of Smith – surfaced in the gently disharmonic guitar duet that opened Pam’s Chalice, before leading into a freethinking exchange of increasingly frenzied guitar solos. Underneath this, drummer Matt Jones roiled and boiled and Jacob Tyghe fuelled the pulse unrelentingly on bass, the pair an empathic rhythm section whose tight timing defined the crisp clarity of the music through the freest of spells. There are few greater pleasures than seeing four really talented musicians sparking off each other with absolute confidence in themselves and their music and this was exactly what we were being treated to.

The Brackish – Jacob Tyghe (bass), Luke Cawthra (guitar) (pic: Tony Benjamin)

It was good to discover that this fourth album had brought yet another set of distinctive pieces to the Brackish repertoire, each a careful assemblage of clever musical elements in their own artful style. Happily it also provided a natural finisher in Mr Universe, a funky 6-time driver of a number that quickly unleashed a powerhouse drum solo from Jones that proved to be a precursor to a borderline unhinged solo excursion from Smith and a shockingly abrupt ending. Timing pressures meant they weren’t allowed an encore but that perfect closure did the job nicely. They may be Brackish by name but Atlas Day and this riveting live display proved them to be as fresh and exciting a post-rock experience as ever.