Catholics Against Architecture - Columns Catholics Against Architecture

Catholics Against Architecture is the name Chris Connelly has given this project that here collects twelve songs crafted from sonic collages, spoken word, fractured melodies, vocals not far removed from those that David Bowie traded some of his best songs on, rivulets of subdued noise and seemingly random location recordings, tender guitar work, tape manipulation and all kinds of other sounds either in between or beyond. Together, these compositions sit outside convention and pay little regard to whatever the so-called zeitgeist may or may not happen to be. If anything, they draw from his own wonderfully rich past, beginning with his co-founding of avant-garde post-punk outfit Finitribe and moving on through his involvement with Revolting Cocks and various other Al Jourgensen-helmed groups before joining Martin Atkins’ ambitious Pigface project and then more or less operating as an artist under his own name. In the decades since he began his artistic career in the early ’80s, he has maintained this experimental disposition while embracing everything from art-pop and rock to the industrial noise he first cut his teeth on. To place him in a comfortable box would do nothing but serve his defiant temperament some kind of injustice.“Columns” is no exception. It’s an album that incorporates many ideas and keeps moving while still somehow magically adding up to a whole that gels and seems to make perfect sense. From its occasionally lo-fi stature (due to being recorded on antiquated reel to reel and various cassette players in a state of disrepair) to its jittery blend of free jazz, tone poetry, labyrinthine textural currents and found sounds, passages of hiss and mature songcraft, it points to an artist perfectly at ease with his position as somebody capable of juggling many ideas. Thematically bound to an anti-religion stance which makes sense in these especially turbulent times where rampant polarisation is galvanised by religion as well as politics, “Columns” stands as a testament to something that can never be compounded enough. The title itself, replete with ironic quotation marks, subtly refers to the columns found within churches as well as the columns of smoke generated by religious war.Ultimately, the album witnesses an artist continuing to explore new trajectories, further prod at ideas that perhaps already presented themselves, and remain true to his place as someone far more than the sum of his parts.