It’s a fair bet that at some point reissue-fatigue will set in.  At some point, swamped by not only the new releases from bands we like but also the sizeable quantity of rediscovered music from labels we admire, the music afficionados will wave a little white flag and give in.  “Enough!” will be the cry. “I’m getting music recommended to me from magazines, websites, blogs, last.fm, even my friends… some of it on vinyl, some on CD, some in a download-only digital format.  It’s hard enough keeping up with last week’s new albums without a ton of obscure recordings from 1968–72 being discovered, dusted down, re-evaluated as the missing link between two of my favourite bands and praised to the heavens as the most important record ever made.  I’ve got too many albums as it is and I just can’t take any more!”

So it is that records are stuffed in carrier bags and flogged to the local second-hand dealer or donated to charity shops where those overlooked CDs are seized upon by excitable young collectors who find an out-of-print album and proclaim it to be the best thing since sliced bread.  Thus the cycle goes on.  Some labels base their entire existence on tracking down rarities and presenting them anew whilst some artists regularly have their back-catalogue deleted and then re-issued by a new label.  This rediscovery lark isn’t all bad though, despite sometimes obscuring the contemporary working musician in favour of some recording from 40 years ago.

Where reissuing is arguably most important is in rediscovering an album that just didn’t reach enough people or was, maybe, the wrong music at the wrong time.  I think certainly the former applies to Contrastate’s A Live Coal Under The Ashes, and I’m delighted to be hearing it now rather than when it first came out back in 1992 because I just wouldn’t have understood it.  In fact, there are moments here I still don’t get – the younger me, listening to a lot of Orbital at the time, would have enjoyed the brief moments of rhythm on the album but been left cold by the soundscapes that dominate much of the album.  It’s a bit like enjoying Scott Walker’s covers of Jacques Brel and hoping to hear more of the same in The Drift – there are some records you just have to grow into.

Contrastate began life performing aggressively extreme music but five years into its existence, the band had clearly calmed down a lot and with the expansion from duo to trio they were taking on weightier themes and musically becoming much more focussed.  The title track is in two parts – the opening part is a sound collage that is impossible to describe succinctly but forms a sort of narrative made up of a number of disparate elements.  Part two is less compelling – an atmospheric work built out of sample groans, hums and other vocal expressions, it is close to outstaying its welcome.  These two tracks bookend “Breaking The Strawmen” which has a short lyric declaimed by the vocalist (it’s quite an, ahem, Balancing act) and a lengthy coda with ambient chords and neatly understated percussion. 

The second half of the album is better still with “The Fingers Of My Foot” opening in an almost Oriental style with plucked strings and a tin whistle that is gradually subsumed by a vocal drone into a darker section of ghostly clangs and low moans.  I road-tested this album walking around my local cemetery (no, really, it’s the closest bit of wild nature to my house) and I was enthralled by the album as a whole but I definitely found it spooky in parts.  The original closing track “An End Marked By Pessimism” has a long, slowly developing introduction with more whistles – it is probably the most successful track on the album, building and sustaining an atmosphere throughout.  Towards the end, there are more vocals, which sound as relevant today as they did then – unless I’m completely off target they concern the first Gulf War and as the Americans are still effectively fighting a war over oil and political influence it hasn’t dated at all.

The new closing track is the re-release bonus to lure anyone who already has the album to get a fresh copy.  “Death Follows The One Eyed Cow” is the most accessible track here but it doesn’t quite fit the weighty mood of the previous work.  The atmospheric synths and percussion are present but they give way to a repetitive scale and chattering clicks that are almost hummable – then Contrastate take a surprise turn by pausing while somebody eats some crisps (at first I thought it was footsteps on gravel but it is definitely the sound of munching).  It’s a rare moment of levity and it is possible to conclude that it was dropped originally because it just didn’t fit.  I’m not convinced it is worth the price of admission alone but it is a successful end to a very good album.

Tesco have certainly rediscovered a gem here, and it is to be hoped that Contrastate find a wider audience through A Live Coal Under The Ashes.  It’s a compelling listen that grabs the listener and captures the attention throughout the six tracks.  Its consistent tone mean that whilst not every track appeals in the same way it is hard to imagine life without any one of them – the album just would not make sense without the original five and the newly added track fits in to make a coherent whole.  Let us hope it doesn’t disappear for another fifteen years.

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