All systems are ghosts remnant

Sanchez is Driven by Demons

2006
rsc010
redstarcommunity
55:15

After finishing All systems are ghosts Sanchez is Driven by Demons realized that they had thrown away most of the recorded material from the session in Matchtown Studios. They decided to go back to the material and start all over again. They wanted to make their last album again, but to make it different, to make it new. It's what most people would call a remix album but the result is something else, a complete rework.

The result is what happens when different times and different feelings processes the same material. Darker and filled with more emotions than a Sanchez is Driven by Demons album ever been before. The soundscape created in this album reminds of earlier influences, like any Constellation band or Mogwai's darker work. The song A thousand frequencies which even includes proper lyrics and singing really plays that classic post-rock card where a delayed guitar finally reaches that longed-for climax. However, when you ask Sanchez is driven by demons, they make it pretty clear that the album only should be considered a sidestep and not to be taken too serious.

The album might not be easy to understand, not easy to like and not easy to find time for. Yes, it might be time and life-consuming but it's definitely worth all effort.

  • Doing a full remix of an album soon after its release has almost become de rigueur in the 21st century in some corners, but doing it entirely oneself is something else again. Thus All systems are ghosts: Remnant, where Sanchez is Driven by Demons, having created their best release yet, proceeded to rework the entire album track by track. Intent is one thing, but result another though happily, Remnant is an intriguing release if only because it's a logical counterpart to the original -- if that was Sanchez mostly exploring electronic textures and loops, then at many points Remnant brings in a bit more of the epic rock scope that helped inspire the band in the first place. It's more by implication than anything else, to be sure, with thicker feedback washes and more prominent if often still muffled drums suggesting louder atmospheres instead of fully bringing them to the fore. the resultant changes to the songs vary -- Wash the spiders away and A thousand frequencies get the general changes mentioned earlier, while The shape gets turned into the album's longest song, a quite haunting ten-minute arrangement of guitar, drums and quiet keyboards lost in a vast space. Elsewhere, the band extends the zoning and drifting qualities of the originals to new areas -- Reinventing the power plant becomes a mournful arc of dramatic swells of sound that then ebb back into silence -- while many songs become the briefest of snippets or transitional experiments (break, which was essentially just that, becomes even shorter here). Perhaps the best thing to keep in mind about the two releases is that they are both complementary and independent, and it's easy to sense one listener favoring one over the other, despite their close connection.

    3.5/5

    Ned Raggett, allmusic.com [200607]