Label bandcamp page:
an-trinse.bandcamp.com

Press:
thequietus.com/articles/27762-ylangylang-an-trinse-bushpilot-tape-cassette-review

Watch the video:
thequietus.com/articles/27680-an-trinse-remix-il-santo-bevitore-video-premiere-2

An Trinse as a project has always been about using the iconography and fossilized culture of prehistoric Ireland, as a conduit to understanding how it can move past this violent history of colonial and religious oppression. Il Santo Bevitore, on the other hand, is Nicola’s way of exploring shamanistic themes from the ancestors of Sardinian and Mediterranean through intense drum workouts, so instantly ideas were forged linking the two cultures. The more they spoke of their histories, the more interesting synchronicities showed themselves, even so far as some of the oldest humans found in what is currently Northern Ireland dating from 5000 years ago whose closest relatives are the inhabitants of Sardinia.

It is hard for the imagination not to run with this, given the similar myths of giants, megalithic constructions and the concentric rings that run through both cultures artwork (which have been found as far away as the USA), and imagine there was some ancient network running between these cultures. Maybe it was simply through the slow process of cultural transfer but perhaps a more mystical technology, and imagining what these ancient communications could consist of influenced the development of the project.

The EP itself features an unplanned stylistic role reversal between the two artists with An Trinse’s usual chasms of drone featuring sections reminiscent of Il Santo Bevitore’s ritualistic drumming and conversely ISB concentrating on densely textured noise.

The side long An Trinse piece ‘ Ethics of Display’ is a self reflection on his use of images of people found fossilised in bogs throughout northern Europe as a source material since the project’s inception. Is this any more ethical than another image of the dead? Bog bodies inhabit an uncanny space between person and object, they once lived but are now caught in a space of chemically suspended animation, contorted and compressed but still obviously human, most likely to have met an untimely, violent end. Is that any better morally than a cliched industrial edgelord using photographs of war and torture? Is a museum any better for placing them amongst trinkets and artefacts for a paying public? The piece has an air of stasis and a circular narrative but violent trauma and moments of contemplation punctuate. It slowly unfurls across 14 minutes where sustained tones which are slowly pulled into a wormhole of drums and emerge into a grinding low end workout.

On the other side IL SANTO BEVITORE creates a more urgent wall of noise from overloaded electronics and field recordings, his usually drumming absent but no space left for another frequency. At one point a playful balloon is manipulated before back to the tonal onslaught. To finish off the release An Trinse created a remix of this piece by restraining these rumblings with a single drum, then as time passes these elements drift away into tone clusters derived from Irish folk music offering some aural balm after all the heaviness that has gone down.