DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE
Systemic (Invada)
One of Low’s last acts before Mimi Parker’s tragically premature death was to take Divide And Dissolve on a world tour, thereby bringing the Melbourne-based pair to much wider attention. In truth, 2021’s Gas Lit had already made a lot of people sit up and listen, and Systemic very much picks up where its predecessor left off.
Like Big|Brave, Takiaya Reed and Sylvie Nehill set amps sizzling for a political purpose, weaponising drone metal in a war on colonial violence and structures of oppression, and staking a claim to territory typically occupied by white male musicians. Orchestral bookends Want and Desire bleed into both Blood Quantum and Indignation, which start out serenely before being gatecrashed by sludgy riffs. On Simulacra, meanwhile, cacophonous entropy gives birth, a song crawling hesitantly out of the wreckage.
Systemic is almost entirely instrumental, but – as on previous releases – Venezuelan writer and artist Minori Sanchez-Fung contributes spoken-word vocals to one track, Kingdom Of Fear, which culminates with the repeated exhortation “Begin to mend”. Divide And Dissolve may set out to smash the system, but they understand the imperative to care and repair too.
words BEN WOOLHEAD