Written by: Dave Cantrell

In synchronous Stereo Embers style, we come to you at the very outset of a new year (‘let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fears,’ eh?) – I began this write-up it’s literally January first – with a review of an album called A Gentle Collapsing from a band named Remnant Three that dropped for the very first time on September 13th in both vinyl and digital form from the wonderful Words on Music label but was originally recorded in…1983, and while that slightly askew factoid, aside from being so quintessentially SEM-like, may in itself strike you as curious and intriguing, well, it pales in comparison to the music within, seeing as it takes the ‘curiously intriguing’ and elevates it, with a quiet force, into the sublime. Indeed, overall, there’s a mysterious – if quite devoted – element at work here (a quality perhaps no better exemplified by the listed personnel: Remnant One, Two, and Three making up the core of the project, assisted on this sole album by Remnants Four and Five, those responsible for this major piece of almost forgotten work believing, as stated in their Bandcamp liner notes, that it’s the work that matters, not the ‘who’ of those that made it), a sort of murky-bright clarity of purpose and execution that defies easy description. Yes, we’ve all heard this sound before, we just haven’t heard it quite like this which is to say that, indeed, this is the type release we’re always hoping for even if we didn’t know it prior to it dropping unannounced from the sky. Some ‘for example’s? Yeah, we’ve got a few.

Straight out the gate, opener “The Gilded Infancy” (amazing title, by the way, and if I’d just begun a band and was looking for a name…) delves into the invincible shadows cast by a certain Ian and the iconic band behind him and stretches them further across the bleakly beautiful UK landscape, in the process instilling the already transfixing gloom with an understated iridescence. Think the end of the world painted in such umbrous tones as to make one forget it’s the end of the world. Darkly beautiful? Check. Immediately unforgettable? Check. And from there they push faithfully on.

“Permanent” arrives like dawn, mystery and lush (if a mite stygian) promise rolling over the landscape in deep billows of yearning and pulsing restraint before “Anomie,” with no little irony one of Collapsing‘s most forceful tracks, rather overwhelms with what could be called a ‘thunderous subtlety’; “The Predicant,” slowed to the pace of dream and the reverb of wonder therein, has this hypnotic quality to it that, aside from – and because of – seemingly soundtracking the very drone of existence will likely, if you’re like us, prove unshakeable. “Words Are Failing,” meanwhile, brims with an incipient ever-unfurlingness that chases after the elusive much like life itself, almost always there on the brink of, of…maybe someday we’ll find out. And then comes the spellbinding triumvirate that closes out this unearthed gem.

The wonderfully-titled “Uncertain of Fire” unspools with a creeping melancholy toward something approaching unspeakable beauty and could easily serve as the atmospheric soundtrack to that deep cave in our hearts that we sometimes can’t help but crawl into, followed by “A Cold Removal,” also sprawling if a tad more spirited however gently fraught that spirit may be before the record’s capped off by lengthy finale “‘M.L.'” (single quotes included) that over its eight-minute run time doubles down on every attribute heretofore noted with as compelling a valedictory tone that one could imagine a song being drawn from.

While the unavoidable Joy Division comparisons would likely propound across the Twitterverse (or whatever it’s called this week), the, um, joy and thrumming satisfaction that obtains from A Gentle Collapsing is, simply, in a premier league of its own, not just standing on its own two feet but trampling all over such facile – and, frankly, lazy – comparisons. The beauty among many beauties here is the sheer strength of composition and (self-) production. That Remnant Three were a tick or two late to the game is critical fodder only for the arrogant dismissers eager to show their rank sense of superiority (their grandparents were likely among those that scathed the Stones for ‘mimicking’ the Pretty Things and whatever Molotovs were hurled Mick’n’Keef’n’Brian’s way). The truth, readily available to every ear willing to hear, is that Remnant Three, based on this one historical piece of freshly-unearthed evidence, belong in every echelon etched in those holy post-punk tablets we all hold so dear. [grab hold of your copy of A Gentle Collapsing here]