Saltillo
Monocyte
If you knew who Saltillo was a few years ago, you know about his album Ganglion. You knew that that fucking album contained the most spectacularly morbid and fucking delicious violin and cello tone ever captured on tape. Not only was the violin and the cello gorgeous, but the track A Necessary End was one of the few songs I would listen to for weeks at a time. It's glitchy electronic framework made the violin and cello pop in a way I had never experienced before, I wanted to fucking die while listening to it.
No, seriously, if I died during that song, I would consider my life a success to go out on such a fucking gorgeous plate of music.
I shelved the thought of ever hearing another Saltillo album again, but then the internet, she provides.
Last week I got an email from my muspy service while on the toilet that notified me of the new albums being released on that Tuesday, and the only word I saw inside that fucking email was Saltillo.
Saltillo was releasing an album called Monocyte.
Saltillo was releasing an album.
I stood up and declared last Tuesday to be the best day of any February I had ever experienced. I didn't even wipe I was so excited to see where to get my hands on it. Googling Saltillo wasn't as easy as I had hoped and I spent the better part of the day tracking down the easiest way to purchase the album, but in my haste I managed to connect with Saltillo himself and potentially set up a meet where I get to be as creepily "fan boy" as Chicago law will allow.
By 4:30pm I had had enough and bought the motherfucker with the last of my Amazon gift card from Christmas and when the work bell whistled, I fucking ran out to my car to sit and soak this motherfucker in.
I realize this is more of a telling of events vs. a regular album review, but I'll get there I promise. You just have to understand that I haven't been this giddy about a new album in a long motherfucking time. Saltillo's Ganglion is pretty close to the epitome of what I consider perfect driving alone music. I prefer to drive alone, this motherfucker makes music for ME dude. There's no way I could explain this excitement to my wife, Tim or even Del, and I call Del and act gay about music all the fucking TIME.
The first two minutes of Saltillo's Monocyte was an eerie entrance into the dank cellar of this seemingly Eastern European BDSM fanatic, with sweaty basement walls, a sticky floor, and wood handled tools of pain strewn about. A voice you can't totally understand, but can't completely ignore is threatening me from around the corner, and where most people would stand up and scream "DON'T GO DOWN THERE", I fucking went. By the time Proxy starts up with its dusty electro thud, where you assume you're stepping into the digital realm, the strings emerge and you're standing on a fucking cloudy yet nearly iridescent green hillside, cloaked in the fur of over a dozen animals, bearded like a fucking boss, gripping a sword that feels as comforting to hold as the silence around you lends itself to discomfort.
Saltillo's Monocyte feels like the 2012 soundtrack to a medieval tale, where the faint moments of beauty are made even more beautiful by the stark contrast against the evil and depravity chasing you from castle to castle. It's an internal movie where battles wage, blood flows and victory is merely not dying. Fires burn, shadows follow far too close, fear is an emotion second only to rage, and while most of Monocyte plays out in slow motion, there are moments where the intensity reaches such peaks as to cause the actual physical sensation of being chased through a forest both brooding and strangely consoling.
This is Game of Thrones in your every day life, and it's absolutely breathtaking.
By the time the female vocals break the emergency glass in If Wishes Were Catholics, I had already deemed it the only thing I'd want warming me and chilling me to the bone all winter.
I absofuckinglutely fucking love the fucking fucking fucking fuck out of this fucking album.
I tell you with strict honesty that I fucking gripped my steering wheel and screamed in thanks that Monocyte found that nerve that Ganglion had all over again.
Rather than writing out the rest of what this album has made me imagine, I strongly encourage you to take the time with it and let it write your own tale.