“Al Karpenter swamps threads of song in seething banks of noise and dissonance. You find yourself focusing on blaring surface noise, while sense and melody percolates somewhere underneath.” On their third album, Al Karpenter merges its singular vision with a host of collaborators. After finally becoming a band in 2022 with Marta Sainz and Enrique Zaccagnini from Santander joining Al Karpenter and Mattin, and in synchronicity with a recent CIA Debutante team-up, this group rises to the challenge of expanding its parameters. As Al Karpenter’s resident theoretician Mattin explains, “The last record was a result of the pandemic, introverted, isolated and with a blues energy. Instead, “The Forthcoming” is the outcome of the possibilities of making music and touring again. We had such an amazing time on tour with Sunik Kim, Dominic Coles and Triple Negative that at the end of our concert at Cafe Oto, we all played together.” Whether delving into manic plunderphonics with Sunik Kim on “A Brand New Brontophobia” [an intense fear of extremely loud, natural noises in the environment - dict. ed.] or accessing the hidden burrows that tunnel beneath polite society with anarchic rock-folk deconstructionists Triple Negative on the title track, Al Karpenter is revolving around its own matrix. “Poison Sun” throws the New York-based Coles into the mix and you feel as if you are seesawing between competing parties, attempting to soak up their atmospheres during each pass through. Mattin again: “The feeling of exuberance, chaos and fragmentation is confronted with the pleasures of collective music making. This record is outwards, cathartic, full on and complex. Against algorithmic fascism and Tiktok attention span, The Forthcoming attempts at a sonic liberation front through its genre screwing approach. This record is of today.” It’s about time—The Forthcoming is here, for ever more.
