(Post-Metal, Drone, Noise Rock) Sum Of R - Lights on Water - 2014, MP3, 320 kbps

Switzerland's Sum Of R creates slow moving instrumental music with a sensibility for hypnotic and complex song structures. Sum Of R’s ritualistic take on expanding sound layers is deepened by the rawness of an unconventional metal atmosphere plunged into darkness, light and its reflection

Lights on Water is the second Sum Of R full lenght album on Utech Records after their self titled 2008 debut.
On Lights on Water the Swiss duo discover their roots within a prehistoric ceremonial context. Those roots go back to times where the sounds of nature were reigned in, ritualized and utilized as food for the soul. They are the cries of gods, the crashing of thunder and the breaking of the waves that inspire the heartfelt intensity. The evolving dialogue between Reto Mäder and Julia Valentina Wolf shapes the nature and cosmos they and their audience exist within. The clash of Mäder’s multi-layered bass melodies, introspective sonic textures and anthemic drums with Wolf’s piercing and engulfing guitars sound like a tide between the most excessive forms of silence and noise.
Lights on Water represents growth in every sense of the word: growth in more concrete strong structures, and growth based on a period of live performances. It doesn’t matter how dark their vision gets, Mäder’s penchant for beauty always shines the way. What at first sounds like destruction results in a new and powerful reconstructing. Lights on Water stands where the lines between natural sound and human-created sound are blurred and leave only the intensity of raw emotion.
Photographs by Corrine Futterlieb. LP limited to 300 copies. Black vinyl + download.
LP has a different interior photo and a different tracklisting than the CD.
Press commentaries:
“Sounds like a shipping container being pushed through the mud by hand; every drum thump is its own distinct punctuation rather than an aftermath of the one before, shunting forward the duo's concrete block one inch at a time into a strangely coherent whole.” (Rock-A-Rolla, UK)
“Some of the most attractive aspects of Sum Of R's sound lies in the combination of a sort of ominous apocalyptic imminency, one of the most recurring and reasonable leitmotiv in the range of sources for inspiration, with a certain gore, which gives forth from sometimes unpredictable combustions of doom metal, industrial, instrumental rock and drone.” (Chain D.L.K, USA)