In one word I would have to say haunting, but the twelve solo album from Chris Connelly, How This Ends, is really much more. Spanning more than 50 minutes, but containing only two tracks this album is epic and apocalyptic. It’s an album that contains no songs by design, but instead is home to a long poem that is repeated, spoken and sung, by a number of contributors. The poem is dark and speaks of death, genocide, homicide all planned and unplanned.
Musically the album is filled with sounds, noises, and even brief moments of beauty. It spans the sonic range from subduded electronics to free jazz horns to manic industrial noise to gracefull piano, and is always changing. To help with all of this Chris enlisted the like of Izi Coonagh (Sugar Bullet), Tania Bowers (Via Tania), James Marlon Magas (Magas, Lake of Dracula), Gordon Sharp (Cindytalk), Zak Boerger (These Wonderful Evils), Bill Rieflin (R.E.M., Ministry, Swans), Brent Gutzeit (TV Pow), Sanford Parker (Minsk, The High Confessions), and David Levine (Mucca Pazza).
Connelly has this to say about his new album, "I wanted to compose without any regard to the song-form." The result of that goal is a piece of music like no other, and one that has to be heard to be understood.
How This Ends will be released by Lens Records on July 13th.