4 Oct 2024
UsernamePassword

Remember Me? | Join | Recover
Click here to sign in via social networking

Metanoia - EP Review: Green Peaceful Lake

30 Jan 2024 // A review by Michael Durand

During the pandemic some said that isolation, the loss of communal music experiences – and perhaps for some, the chance for reflection – brought about a growth in the supply and demand for ambient music. How else to relieve existential dread and balm the soul? Now the pandemic is over, but while many of us are still healing, does a return to hedonistic music and flesh-pressing gigs give us all that we need? Wellington artist Metanoia says No, and presents a new EP Green Peaceful Lake. Here is a collection of three tracks – on the face of it purely restorative, but then offering something else – of chiming, layered and spacious guitars, tape loops and distant voice interludes. It’s only 12 minutes long, and perhaps best listened to on repeat from your couch in the dark, and ideally from under your favourite blanket. Does it provide the relief that ambient music can often purport to be? The blanket may help bring you a sense of safety. 

This is the first major outing for Metanoia – a solo project of Shae McKenzie – since the 2021 single Sonder. From the first and title track Green Peaceful Lake, each of the three pieces flows organically with multi-layered guitar work and are backed by the most subtle and tasteful of airy blue sky synthesizers. Each riff stands on its own, but if you’re not paying attention the movement from one to another feels almost shapeless, as if we are travelling on some great drifting mass of sky and clouds – or, as the title suggests, watching or swimming in a beautiful body of water. The effect must surely be intentional and brings about a mediative force, far stronger than it might seem from the subtlety of the music. The guitars remind me of the latest work from Slowdive, just without the pop, while synths are something akin to late-era Pink Floyd – Learning to Fly, perhaps – but set in your lounge or bedroom rather than in a stadium.  

To begin with the meditation is uplifting and healing – but it doesn’t last. From the second track Swept Out To Sea, darkness begins to appear. This comes in the form of segments of reverse-sounding tape loops, unidentifiable ambient sounds and half-audible voices. One such moment is recording of a call to a dead phone number, with its automated message to go elsewhere. This number is no longer in use, and we might wonder why. Another, which closes the record on Death of a Whole House, seems to be a field recording or a sample of a speech. It has the tone of some authoritarian wannabe or a hack guru to their followers. The words, which are barely intelligible, are set against a haunting and heavily processed sound effect, perhaps originally a distant police siren or wind blowing through pylons. These interludes remind me of Deafheaven’s song Windows – in that case, a noise soundscape backed by the audio of a drug deal taking place. 

McKenzie has said the music deals with the emotions of a fine day as it turns sour when a drowning occurs. The lake, green and peaceful as it seems at the start, also has the power to take us away to our end. These contrasts within the music create introspection and balance, despite our admission of how dark the subject matter is. As if by a counterweight, the disaster presented towards the end contrasts with, and highlights, the positivity of life on a summer day that we find the start. It makes for a satisfying piece, and one that will be open to our own interpretations.

On a future and longer recording, McKenzie’s musicianship and writing could support more of that sort of narrative arc. For now, Green Peaceful Lake delivers on its own terms, almost like two healing medicines to be taken together: at first welcome prescription of relief and sanity, and second a necessary grounding. A recording that could go some way towards restoring you if taken with repeat doses.

 

About Metanoia

Metanoia released it's debut single Sonder in 2021, followed by the 3-part album Green Peaceful Lake in 2024.

Formed in 2020 by Shae McKenzie, Metanoia have a resonating soundtrack feel to their pieces, with layered guitars, samples and synths, and have been met with praise from early reviewers.


Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for Metanoia

Releases

Green Peaceful Lake
Year: 2024
Type: Album

Other Reviews By Michael Durand

Peace Love Perfection - Album Review: Nirvana Is Peace
29 Aug 2024 // by Michael Durand
Nirvana Is Peace the debut album from Wellington native and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Barnao’s project Peace Love Perfection – a 50 minute trip around psychedelia, EDM, jazz and mysticism. These are mostly instrumentals with low key dance grooves or classic jazz rhythms, Rhodes pianos, retro synths, funk bass lines walking across octaves, claves, shakers and central to the picture, Barnao’s inspired saxophone playing.
Read More...
Toby Sussex - EP Review: Weather Dependent
08 Jun 2024 // by Michael Durand
Toby Sussex’s debut EP Weather Dependent is a compact and ultimately satisfying set of singer-songwriter style reflections on life, death and relationships. It has catchy melodies and is well performed and produced, signalling at the outset that Sussex has what it takes to produce a full album in the singer songwriter genre.
Read More...
Polite Company - Album Review: Please Go Wild
24 May 2024 // by Michael Durand
I guess it’s not a surprise that after the Mutton Birds (Dominion Road, Anchor Me, etc.) all the members went on to further greatness: David Long to scoring movies and the Labcoats, Ross Burge to play drums for virtually all of New Zealand’s musical royalty, and Don McGlashen to solo notoriety.
Read More...
The Feel Good Service - EP Review: DirtyFunknSoul
24 Apr 2024 // by Michael Durand
Funk, soul and disco music seem to be so defined by their blueprints of the 1970's and 1980's that almost any serious modern attempt at them risks sounding nostalgic. As if these genres lived and died in history, and now we may only pay tribute to them – rather than contribute any further.
Read More...
Repairs - Album Review: Disappointing Sequel
19 Apr 2024 // by Michael Durand
The following might be words that relate to the sound and feel of Disappointing Sequel, the second album from Repairs, out this week: tension, discordant contrarianism, tearing metal, nosebleeds, morse code, ensemble yelling, guitar feedback, aneurisms, anarchy machines, absolute defiance ….In case you didn’t know there’s a revolution coming and its being led out by Martin Phillips, James Milne and Nicola Edwards.
Read More...
Seafog - Album Review: Slow Death
14 Apr 2024 // by Michael Durand
Port Chalmers four-piece Seafog have been with us for a few years now, pumping out some very well received doses of cross genre guitar type stuff — Raise Your Skinny Fist (2016), Dig It On Up (2017) and Animal Lovers (2019) — that each seemed to be spawned from a world none other than Port Chalmers itself. This week sees the release a further full album from the same place, Slow Death.
Read More...
Grant Haua - Album Review: Mana Blues
12 Feb 2024 // by Michael Durand
If you’re not paying close attention, it would be easy to think Grant Haua has a bout of the blues. His new 2023 album Mana Blues follows closely behind his 2022 release Ora Blues at the Chapel Vol.
Read More...
HOIHOI - EP Review: Tahitahi
06 Jan 2024 // by Michael Durand
Whatever defines post-punk in our times — post-Trump, post-covid, post-war, pre-war, pre-Trump — perhaps isn’t too clear to most of us, as long as it’s loud, raucous, and anti-whatever the current thing is. Christchurch band HOIHOI are working on a current version of that definition for us with their new EP Tahitahi – four tracks of guitars and vocals, half in Te Reo Maori and half in English, two thirds an uprising, one third introspection.
Read More...
View All Articles By Michael Durand

NZ Top 10 Singles

  • DIE WITH A SMILE
    Lady Gaga And Bruno Mars
  • TASTE
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • BIRDS OF A FEATHER
    Billie Eilish
  • ESPRESSO
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • GOOD LUCK, BABE!
    Chappell Roan
  • LOSE CONTROL
    Teddy Swims
  • A BAR SONG (TIPSY)
    Shaboozey
  • BEAUTIFUL THINGS
    Benson Boone
  • PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • TOO SWEET
    Hozier
View the Full NZ Top 40...
muzic.net.nz Logo
100% New Zealand Music
All content on this website is copyright to muzic.net.nz and other respective rights holders. Redistribution of any material presented here without permission is prohibited.
Report a ProblemReport A Problem