This is not a straightforward love
story as one might expect, but, as ENDON describe in the liner notes for Boy Meets Girl, a narrative is merely
abstraction set within a series of governing symbols.
Boy Meets Girl stutters the album to life, launching the listener
into a slab of squelching noise, whilst illegible wails hover high against a
lurching, stoned backbone of guitar. Heart
Shaped Brain backs up against the opener, following in similar vein, though
the pulsating heart of the former appears to have been given a shot of
adrenaline.
There’s a certain ecstasy to Born Again, even though acted out over
the course of two minutes. A minute of screaming gives way to looped electronic
textures, abstract in form compared to its preceding neighbours.
Doubts as Source, is the central opus of the album (11 of its 30
minute total). Its length and central position lends it an allusion to
narrative significance of the whole. Said narrative, however, is illusive. Nagura’s
increasingly erratic panting seemingly utilises anxiety as a form of
transcendental breathing exercises. This chaotic panting carries the song, morphing
into the cries of an infant child. This eventually drops pace into a sludgy
riff, before flat lining into a haunting, yet captivating noisescape which all
but collapses into unaccompanied tortured wails. The track is finally recovered
from complete self-destruction by the emergence of a bleeping electronic refrain,
carrying the event to its close and allowing ENDON’s story to move to the next
chapter.
Said next chapter, opens to the
sound of church bells. The church bells, with their recognisable cultural
associations, act to set a scene, merging into the fractured electronic, bass
laden stomp of Love Amnesia, its
vocal screeching suggesting alternative emotive outcomes to the event with each
listen.
Final Acting Out is a guitar led freak out, whilst Red Shoes feels mildly psychedelic
compared to the rest of the album, though in a dark Lynchian sense, and
disembodied figures mock our protagonist with laughter in its closing moments. Closer Not For You with its punky vibes feels to provide an air of
liberation and renewal to our journey. Story ends. Story begins again.
Though the albums’ narrative
(intended or imagined) may be glimpsed only occasionally, the suggestion of
such invites a new dimension to the chaos. In its extremity and abstraction Boy Meets Girl creates a structure unto
itself, reaching heights of ecstatic abandon and murky, unsettling lows.
JT
