Sub Rosa bringt eine Doppel-LP-Edition von Mick Harris und Martyn Bates “Murder Ballads [Drift]” heraus – es handelt sich dabei um das 1994 bei Musica Maxima Magnetica erschienene Album “Drift”, dem später “Passages” (1997) und “Incest” (1998) folgten, wonach dann noch im selben Jahr alle drei in einer 3-CD-Box als “Murder Ballads (The Complete Collection)” beim amerikanischen Invisible-Label zusammen herauskamen. Napalm Death-Drummer Harris, der sich v.a. bei seinem späteren Scorn-Project als Virtuose subtiler, ambienter Klänge beweisen konnte, und der für seinen indeosynkratischen Gesangsstil bei Eyeless in Gaza, solo und mit Twelve Thousand Days her bekannte Bates brachten die jahrhundertealten düsteren Folkballaden in eine bisher ungekannte Form, bei der verschlungene Melodien, ferne Echos und hypnotische Dröhnung den Songs eine ganz neue, traumwandlerische Gestalt geben.

“Mick Harris traffics in the isolationist ambience of Lull, while Martyn Bates is the emotive voice of literate cult-pop duo Eyeless in Gaza. The unlikely pair – one given to terminally frigid drone, the other to impassioned, bittersweet voicings – finds common ground in folk music’s most macabre tradition, the murder ballad. These ghoulish parables are awash in blood and tears, the strands of love, hate, birth, death, sin, and salvation entwined within like the roots of an ancient tree. Mothers callously kill their children; suitors slay their maidens without remorse; and fate exacts its cruel price from all. The archaic murder ballads that leak from Bates’ vocal cords are intensely sad and carnal. They tend to leap off cliffs of hollow effects or drone darkly, offering neither a robust delivery nor an element of irony to take the edge off. The archetypal characters that live and die in them give life’s full tragedy back to Harris’ electronically numbed “post-isolationist” dreaming. Drift (originally released in 1994) plays out an unbreakable and timeless cycle of bloody folklore (people) and hypnotic soundscapes (the god who watches). The effect is chilling yet engrossing. Where most ambient music has barely enough courage to ring the doorbell and run, Murder Ballads slips through the cracks of the unconscious and does its work with remarkable ease.” (Sub Rosa)