The Taps Of The Holy Trinity – Customs And Rituals Of The Taps Of The Holy Trinity

Fenny Compton

With Mat Handley’s micro-label empire gradually but imminently winding down, imprint-by-imprint, comes the penultimate full-length product from the rustically-cleaving Fenny Compton, following on from the recent double-sized Sinking In The Mud swansong compilation from the electronics-centric Preston Capes.

This latest is just ahead of a couple more outings from the wider-ranging Woodford Halse as well as one last sonic library addition from the ultra-niche Luddite Tapes. Reassuringly though, this debut album from The Taps Of The Holy Trinity confirms that Hadley’s generous and efficient one-man yet multi-directional operation still possesses shrewd and risk-taking A&R agility at the closing stages.

A heady hybridising affair, Customs And Rituals Of… brings together the core multi-instrumentalist line-up of Arthur Karanikas, Michael Plater, Dave Bullock and Dee Hannan with the auxiliary assistance of Danny Martinov, Paul Rodgers and Massimilano Gallo. Between them, they cook up a six-song stew of electro-acoustic sounds and storyboards that blend the antiquarian lineage of Greek demotika stylings and Anatolian folk traditions with pastoral psychedelic prog and vintage ‘80s-to-‘90s Melbourne-via-Berlin filmic noir.

Minimalistic yet majestic opener “The Magus” stretches itself out over dark twirling electric guitar lines, rattlesnake-like noises, violin drones and spiritualistic ululations, to set the general cinematic scene. Thereafter, things extend into whispered and howled tales amidst joyous rhythmical meshing (“Most Of Them Were Ghosts”) and low-slung early-Bad Seeds murkiness (“Buried Crowns”) to round out the first half of this cassette-based collection (that is also available digitally).

On the other side of the extruded plastic presentation, proceedings glide into imagined Goat-does-“Careful With That Axe, Eugene” hauntings (“Anastenaria” and “Slow Ghosts”), before sprawling across a twelve-minute finale which shifts through imposing spoken-word murmurs, rippling-to-clanging Blixa Bargeld-infused six strings and Rick Wright-imbued organ-conjured atmospherics that are eventually subsumed into a coda of shimmering percussion-led layers (“The Passage”).

Otherworldly and oblique in equal measures, this is a curiously compelling conception overall that signifies either just the start of a longer epic journey or a fleeting collaborative detour. Whichever it is, Customs And Rituals Of The Taps Of The Holy Trinity marks itself out an arrestingly memorable entry in the soon-to-be-sealed-up Fenny Compton catalogue.

-Adrian-