Hissing Tiles - Boychoir [Cassette]

Boychoir is the Cincinnati, OH post-hardcore band's second LP, and first for the experimental label Whited Sepulchre (Midwife, Planning For Burial, Forest Management). Recorded at Cincinnati's historic Ultrasuede Studio, the album exhibits a more cohesive coupling of the desperate noise of early releases with an expanded sense of melody, dynamics, and space. Their approach to production and instrumentation is lawless: synths and vibraphones ring out next to prepared guitars and broken cymbals; tambourines and choirs share space with birdsong, controlled microphone feedback, and sampled drones. A washing machine is used as a percussion instrument. No sound was considered off limits.

Thematically, the band has chosen to use its platform to examine and dissect male archetypes, looking at how they contribute, or are directly responsible for, a world they view as increasingly drowning in alarming, toxic rhetoric. The songs on Boychoir act as a series of ground-level vignettes, portraying family members led astray, the silently complicit, the increasingly unhinged, and the outwardly destructive. For all of the vitriol shown towards these targets, there is an equal amount of empathy and solidarity shown towards those forced to exist in such an environment, and an overriding sense of hope that humanity will eventually right the ship.

• Format Detail: LP
• Format: Cassette
• Genre: Indie & Alternative