Apse Climbs Up

Apse has changed a whole lot since the last time I check in with them a couple of years ago…gotten way more dance-driven and pop for one thing, brought the vocals up a bit for another. It took some getting used to, this new one Climb Up, but eventually it sort of clicked, especially the last two tracks. This review is kind of late, because the PR firm (Tell All Your Friends – thinking of re-naming them Tell Some of Your Friends) was incredibly inept at getting me a copy of the record, and I ended up getting a scratchy burner (with a couple of tracks unlistenable) from my editor at Blurt. The review starts like this:

The body-moving, bass driven psychedelia of Apse's Climb Up represents a sharp curve away from the more cerebral atmospheres of 2006's Spirit. Where before the band rode galloping drum beats over vast, brooding landscapes, now their tunes writhe and groove hedonistically. Spirit felt like an obscure sacrament, while Climb Up seems more like a celebration, one that culminates in two late-album pop psychedelic anthems, "Climb Up" and "Closure."

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Apse...Galloping through ominous landscapes

Very impressive drone-kraut-experimental full-length from Apse, a band now based on Cape Cod...good stuff if you're into bands like Bardo Pond, JOMF, Oneida, etc.

Here's the PopMatters review:

Apse
Spirit
(ATP)
US release date: 19 August 2008
UK release date: 7 July 2008

by Jennifer Kelly

A galloping beat runs nearly all the way through Apse’s Spirits, the debut full-length released late in 2006 then reissued this summer by All Tomorrow’s Parties. It starts in “From the North,” with founder Ezer Lichtenstein (since departed from the band) pounding out a hurtling, headlong rhythm of toms and snares. He creates a physical sense of forward motion, driving the tunes over the ominous, nocturnal spaces established by guitarist and singer Robert Toher. Yet there is also an otherworldly spirituality in these cuts. Heavily processed “la la la las” float in disembodied mirages, both in this cut and the “Legions” that follows it. On wonderful, “Shade of the Moore,” a sleepy waltz, a music box melody is allowed to flower briefly before it implodes into urgent, driving rhythms. Subterranean low-end, insinuated among drum crashes by guitarist turned and bassist Aaron Piccirillo, reinforces the sense of movement through darkness in this cut. You can almost feel the wind in your hair.

One bit of still tranquility breaks this album’s powerful rush. That comes with “Wind Through Walls,” a serene and sunny interval of psychedelia. Here, piano chords and wordless voices echoing through empty halls, in an expansive, trippy atmosphere that is still wholly rooted in melody. If you have been thinking Amon Düüland Can up to now (and perhaps, on the basis of the vocals only, Radiohead), you will suddenly find your mind slipping to Pink Floyd. Yet it is a temporary lull in the restless race to the end, the epic title track. Here mystery and calm co-exist somehow with rampant motion, an eye in the storm, a zen stillness amidst all-consuming effort.