| Do Make Say Think |
Stubborn Persistent Illusions |
Do Make Say Think — Stubborn Persistent Illusions (19 May 2017) 
•♠• “Stubborn Persistent Illusions can seem daunting with its hour~long runtime, but it’s a worthy monolith that can be explored on the listener’s own terms. These songs don’t necessarily need your attention for validation — they have their own agency. Inevitably, they will come home to roost.” (Cole Firth; Exclaim)
•♠• Seminal post~rock pioneers whose raw, psychedelic output put them firmly at the experimental end of that genre’s continuum.
Origin: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Genres: Post~rock, experimental rock, jazz fusion, instrumental rock
Album release: 19 May 2017
Record Label:
•— Constellation
•— Amoeba Records — (USA)
•— Fat Beats — (USA)
•— Norman Records — (UK/EU)
•— Boomkat — (UK/EU)
•— Piccadilly — (UK/EU)
•— Rough Trade — (UK)
•— Drift — (UK)
•— Resident — (UK)
•— Flight 13 — (DE)
★”“★ The deluxe double vinyl edition of Stubborn Persistent Illusions features 2x180gram audiophile pressing from Optimal (Germany) in a gatefold jacket with printed inner dust sleeves, 12”x12” art/credit insert, 12”x24”art print poster and Side Four vinyl etching. All printed on uncoated boards and papers. Featuring original commissioned artwork by Marianne Collins.
★”“★ The 2x180g LP vinyl edition of Stubborn Persistent Illusions weighs a lot. We encourage you to support the independent retailers in your territory/continent linked above, which should also save you significantly on postage. xoDMST
Duration: 60:52
Tracks:
01 War On Torpor 5:24
02 Horripilation 10:27
03 Murder of Thoughts 5:52
04 Bound 4:49
05 And Boundless 7:13
06 Her Eyes On the Horizon 8:20
07 d=57vh (As Far As the Eye Can See) 7:52
08 Shlomo’s Son 3:45
09 Return, Return Again 7:10
℗ 2017 Constellation
Current members:
♠ Ohad Benchetrit — guitar, bass guitar, saxophone, flute
♠ David Mitchell — drums
♠ James Payment — drums
♠ Justin Small — guitar, bass guitar, keyboard
♠ Charles Spearin — bass guitar, guitar, trumpet, cornet
♠ Julie Penner — violin, trumpet
♠ Michael Barth — trumpet
♠ Adam Marvy — trumpet
© ★”“★ Julie Penner is the violinist for Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene, and the music producer for The Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba with her husband and two young sons.
★”“★ Do Make Say Think has been widely celebrated as one of the preeminent instrumental rock bands of the 90s~00s. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is the group’s first album in eight years ~ and a brilliant addition to one of the most consistently inventive and critically praised discographies in the ‘post~rock’ canon. The band has been acclaimed as “the supernova in Constellation’s stellar network…arguably the finest back catalogue of any currently operating instrumental rock band” (Drowned In Sound), creating “some of the most honest, unpretentious, group~oriented rock of their time” (Popmatters). Among the band’s strengths is an ineffable naturalism that avoids anything too woolly, proggy, purist or clichéd, while remaining a fundamentally guitar~driven group whose ornate four~ and six~string interplay uniquely balances rockism, pastoralism, and electronic~influenced post~production. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is at once familiar and as fresh as anything DMST has committed to tape; produced and mixed as always by the band itself ~ a continuing affirmation of the group’s DIY ethos and their singular self~production acumen and aesthetic. Do Make Say Think enter their third decade with a new album that reaffirms their promise of genuinely expressive, narrative and restorative instrumental rock music ~ an one that will surely rank among their best.
Review
By Ian King / 18 MAY 2017, 09:30 BST // Score: 9
★”“★ As if a Bat~Signal on the CN Tower was lit up, the Toronto guitar leagues have been summoned, and Do Make Say Think wander back from the wilderness of hiatus with their first album in eight years.
★”“★ Also running to indie rock’s rescue after a similar quiet spell is Broken Social Scene, the collective with whom Do Make Say Think share members Charles Spearin and Ohad Benchetrit. Both camps had taken their respective premises — one a small orchestra’s worth of players making rock music, the other a rock line~up building orchestral narratives — to considerable lengths by the advent of their last records. One now has to squint to recall a time at the end of the ‘90s when Do Make Say Think appeared to be a cryptic jazz counterpart to the dystopian overtures of Constellation labelmates Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
★”“★ Stubborn Persistent Illusions germinated slowly and was written and recorded between 2014 and 2016. It isn’t a document of continuous development in the same manner as the back~to~back & Yet & Yet and Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn were, but Do Make Say Think can still grow together. On Winter Hymn they declared “War on Want”, and here “War On Torpor” burns off the titular slumber, wasting no time getting reacquainted with a trademark frantic crescendo. They have never lingered too long in the moment, and don’t start here. Through cinematic wanders (“Horripilation”), two~part stargazers (“Bound”, “And Boundless”), and sentimental finales (“Return, Return Again”), their leaner instincts are always there to pull the rug out from under the gathering grandeur.
★”“★ Musical statements like this, able to carry so much weight yet move so freely, and all without saying a word, are few and far between. The title and loose concept for the album stem from “an image in a Buddhist poem about working with a wild mind,” and Stubborn Persistent Illusions finds Do Make Say Think returning as restless and reaching as they’ve ever been. ♠ https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/
Also:
By Jay Balfour, MAY 17 2017 / Score: 7.8
★”“★ The Toronto post~rock band returns with their first album in eight years. It’s the well~oiled sound of a band pushing the boundaries of a genre littered with tropes, without succumbing to any of them.
istening to the Toronto band’s new album, I wished upon myself an experiment: What if I heard one of these tracks without knowing it was Do Make Say Think? I’m sure “Horripilation,” at more than ten minutes long with its braided guitars and dual drums, would have given the band away immediately. But other songs would have kept their secret, and so there is much newness in which to revel on Stubborn Persistent Illusions, the band’s first album since 2009’s Other Truths, which will sound both familiar and peculiar to anyone who has spent time with their previous music.
★”“★ Even the most arcane genres have tropes, and post~rock has built up plenty of its own. The most well~defined and obvious are often derided (or celebrated) as “crescendocore,” a self~explanatory tag that doesn’t quite pin down a group like Do Make Say Think. Yes, they are often building up to something in their songs, but not always in volume or drama. The group, who shares members with the recently revived Toronto indie outfit Broken Social Scene, has the well~oiled sound of a band in its third decade, a chemistry required to compose such experimental rock and make it sound natural instead of regimented. They don’t always sound tight, but they never sound apart.
★”“★ Stubborn Persistent Illusions has the immediate trappings of a Do Make Say Think record. “War on Torpor,” which is unusually charged up from its first moments, can feel like it’s spinning in place as a result. “Horripilation” might be immediately identifiable as a DMST song — the clean, almost bumbling guitar riffs have a delicate sturdiness in their repetition — but as it winds around in minutes~long sections, the group uncovers new wrinkles in their sound. Two minutes in, a snare drum sounds downright funky all alone like that, and a few minutes later, a bass drum marches into a gallop. It’s not just that it sounds like a Do Make Say Think recording, it covers distance like one, a marathon approach: themes are repeated like track workout sets, interludes play out like lazy jogs, the home stretch feels like an accomplished return.
★”“★ At their core, DMST are a guitars and drums group — two of each — but they’ve often let other instruments perform the cinematic lifts of their mid~song interludes. A couple minutes into “Her Eyes on the Horizon,” the horns take over entirely, slowing things to a creak so that the band can rebirth the original theme on a refreshed, sanctified canvas. In this way, Do Make Say Think’s songs don’t demand attention so much as reward it. The album is easy to let play through, but sometimes hard to feel intimate with its complexity. It makes for music that’s wonderful to live with, encouraging repetition while allowing for unconcentrated listening.
★”“★ Like most post~rock outfits, DMST invest heavily in timbre — their guitars variously ring, buzz, shudder, and twinkle — but they rarely let things get atmospheric, instead grounding their music in weaving, persistent riffs. The album’s frantic centerpiece, “And Boundless,” is propped up by a misdirecting set~up track called “Bound.” The first song builds and collapses a twinkling surge, but it doesn’t pay off in the way most DMST pieces do. “And Boundless” is a relentless and unnerving march by comparison, built on imposing, siren~like guitar strums and crashing drums, this from a band frequently and accurately pegged as pastoral. Even at their loudest, DMST are never rollicking or spinning out of control; here they’ve harnessed and reigned in one of their most nerve~wracking works into an opus that winds around like a top prowling around a table.
★”“★ Elsewhere, “As Far As the Eye Can See” finds the band at their calmest, playing grazing tunes built around the type of filigree guitar~riffs~as~theme they’ve made into a hallmark. It’s an effect that produces an internal logic, in which a song can feel like an island with its own ecosystem, and an album an archipelago. It’s challenging to find your way inside. In the oscillation from serenity to cinematic triumph, their music can seep into your conscious and float around your daily life, not so much a soundtrack as a pliable accompaniment. Even when it’s not competing for your attention, Stubborn Persistent Illusions feels impossible to put down. ♠ http://pitchfork.com/
AllMusic Review by Paul Simpson; Score: ****
♠ http://www.allmusic.com/album/stubborn-persistent-illusions-mw0003040226
By Bekki Bemrose May 19th, 2017 / Score: 8
★”“★ It really is a rarity to find artists this far into their career, and after such a sustained break, sound so fresh and positive. Clearly, rather than lying dormant these individuals kept spinning along with the rest of the world, and their return is a great deal richer for it. As a genre post~rock is certainly stubborn and persistent in the face of rocky times for guitar music, but its value is no illusion if Do Make Say Think’s latest is anything to go by.
♠ http://drownedinsound.com/releases/19943/reviews/4151046
By Cole Firth, Published May 17, 2017 / Score: 9
♠ http://exclaim.ca/music/article/do_make_say_think-stubborn_persistent_illusions
Website: http://domakesaythink.com/
Bandcamp: https://domakesaythink.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoMakeSayThink/
Label: http://cstrecords.com/domakesaythink/
_____________________________________________________________
| Do Make Say Think |
Stubborn Persistent Illusions |
•♠• Seminal post~rock pioneers whose raw, psychedelic output put them firmly at the experimental end of that genre’s continuum.
Origin: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Genres: Post~rock, experimental rock, jazz fusion, instrumental rock
Album release: 19 May 2017
Record Label:
•— Constellation
•— Amoeba Records — (USA)
•— Fat Beats — (USA)
•— Norman Records — (UK/EU)
•— Boomkat — (UK/EU)
•— Piccadilly — (UK/EU)
•— Rough Trade — (UK)
•— Drift — (UK)
•— Resident — (UK)
•— Flight 13 — (DE)
★”“★ The deluxe double vinyl edition of Stubborn Persistent Illusions features 2x180gram audiophile pressing from Optimal (Germany) in a gatefold jacket with printed inner dust sleeves, 12”x12” art/credit insert, 12”x24”art print poster and Side Four vinyl etching. All printed on uncoated boards and papers. Featuring original commissioned artwork by Marianne Collins.
★”“★ The 2x180g LP vinyl edition of Stubborn Persistent Illusions weighs a lot. We encourage you to support the independent retailers in your territory/continent linked above, which should also save you significantly on postage. xoDMST
Duration: 60:52
Tracks:
01 War On Torpor 5:24
02 Horripilation 10:27
03 Murder of Thoughts 5:52
04 Bound 4:49
05 And Boundless 7:13
06 Her Eyes On the Horizon 8:20
07 d=57vh (As Far As the Eye Can See) 7:52
08 Shlomo’s Son 3:45
09 Return, Return Again 7:10
℗ 2017 Constellation
Current members:
♠ Ohad Benchetrit — guitar, bass guitar, saxophone, flute
♠ David Mitchell — drums
♠ James Payment — drums
♠ Justin Small — guitar, bass guitar, keyboard
♠ Charles Spearin — bass guitar, guitar, trumpet, cornet
♠ Julie Penner — violin, trumpet
♠ Michael Barth — trumpet
♠ Adam Marvy — trumpet
★”“★ Do Make Say Think has been widely celebrated as one of the preeminent instrumental rock bands of the 90s~00s. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is the group’s first album in eight years ~ and a brilliant addition to one of the most consistently inventive and critically praised discographies in the ‘post~rock’ canon. The band has been acclaimed as “the supernova in Constellation’s stellar network…arguably the finest back catalogue of any currently operating instrumental rock band” (Drowned In Sound), creating “some of the most honest, unpretentious, group~oriented rock of their time” (Popmatters). Among the band’s strengths is an ineffable naturalism that avoids anything too woolly, proggy, purist or clichéd, while remaining a fundamentally guitar~driven group whose ornate four~ and six~string interplay uniquely balances rockism, pastoralism, and electronic~influenced post~production. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is at once familiar and as fresh as anything DMST has committed to tape; produced and mixed as always by the band itself ~ a continuing affirmation of the group’s DIY ethos and their singular self~production acumen and aesthetic. Do Make Say Think enter their third decade with a new album that reaffirms their promise of genuinely expressive, narrative and restorative instrumental rock music ~ an one that will surely rank among their best.
By Ian King / 18 MAY 2017, 09:30 BST // Score: 9
★”“★ As if a Bat~Signal on the CN Tower was lit up, the Toronto guitar leagues have been summoned, and Do Make Say Think wander back from the wilderness of hiatus with their first album in eight years.
★”“★ Also running to indie rock’s rescue after a similar quiet spell is Broken Social Scene, the collective with whom Do Make Say Think share members Charles Spearin and Ohad Benchetrit. Both camps had taken their respective premises — one a small orchestra’s worth of players making rock music, the other a rock line~up building orchestral narratives — to considerable lengths by the advent of their last records. One now has to squint to recall a time at the end of the ‘90s when Do Make Say Think appeared to be a cryptic jazz counterpart to the dystopian overtures of Constellation labelmates Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
★”“★ Stubborn Persistent Illusions germinated slowly and was written and recorded between 2014 and 2016. It isn’t a document of continuous development in the same manner as the back~to~back & Yet & Yet and Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn were, but Do Make Say Think can still grow together. On Winter Hymn they declared “War on Want”, and here “War On Torpor” burns off the titular slumber, wasting no time getting reacquainted with a trademark frantic crescendo. They have never lingered too long in the moment, and don’t start here. Through cinematic wanders (“Horripilation”), two~part stargazers (“Bound”, “And Boundless”), and sentimental finales (“Return, Return Again”), their leaner instincts are always there to pull the rug out from under the gathering grandeur.
★”“★ Musical statements like this, able to carry so much weight yet move so freely, and all without saying a word, are few and far between. The title and loose concept for the album stem from “an image in a Buddhist poem about working with a wild mind,” and Stubborn Persistent Illusions finds Do Make Say Think returning as restless and reaching as they’ve ever been. ♠ https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/
Also:
By Jay Balfour, MAY 17 2017 / Score: 7.8
★”“★ The Toronto post~rock band returns with their first album in eight years. It’s the well~oiled sound of a band pushing the boundaries of a genre littered with tropes, without succumbing to any of them.
istening to the Toronto band’s new album, I wished upon myself an experiment: What if I heard one of these tracks without knowing it was Do Make Say Think? I’m sure “Horripilation,” at more than ten minutes long with its braided guitars and dual drums, would have given the band away immediately. But other songs would have kept their secret, and so there is much newness in which to revel on Stubborn Persistent Illusions, the band’s first album since 2009’s Other Truths, which will sound both familiar and peculiar to anyone who has spent time with their previous music.
★”“★ Even the most arcane genres have tropes, and post~rock has built up plenty of its own. The most well~defined and obvious are often derided (or celebrated) as “crescendocore,” a self~explanatory tag that doesn’t quite pin down a group like Do Make Say Think. Yes, they are often building up to something in their songs, but not always in volume or drama. The group, who shares members with the recently revived Toronto indie outfit Broken Social Scene, has the well~oiled sound of a band in its third decade, a chemistry required to compose such experimental rock and make it sound natural instead of regimented. They don’t always sound tight, but they never sound apart.
★”“★ Stubborn Persistent Illusions has the immediate trappings of a Do Make Say Think record. “War on Torpor,” which is unusually charged up from its first moments, can feel like it’s spinning in place as a result. “Horripilation” might be immediately identifiable as a DMST song — the clean, almost bumbling guitar riffs have a delicate sturdiness in their repetition — but as it winds around in minutes~long sections, the group uncovers new wrinkles in their sound. Two minutes in, a snare drum sounds downright funky all alone like that, and a few minutes later, a bass drum marches into a gallop. It’s not just that it sounds like a Do Make Say Think recording, it covers distance like one, a marathon approach: themes are repeated like track workout sets, interludes play out like lazy jogs, the home stretch feels like an accomplished return.
★”“★ At their core, DMST are a guitars and drums group — two of each — but they’ve often let other instruments perform the cinematic lifts of their mid~song interludes. A couple minutes into “Her Eyes on the Horizon,” the horns take over entirely, slowing things to a creak so that the band can rebirth the original theme on a refreshed, sanctified canvas. In this way, Do Make Say Think’s songs don’t demand attention so much as reward it. The album is easy to let play through, but sometimes hard to feel intimate with its complexity. It makes for music that’s wonderful to live with, encouraging repetition while allowing for unconcentrated listening.
★”“★ Like most post~rock outfits, DMST invest heavily in timbre — their guitars variously ring, buzz, shudder, and twinkle — but they rarely let things get atmospheric, instead grounding their music in weaving, persistent riffs. The album’s frantic centerpiece, “And Boundless,” is propped up by a misdirecting set~up track called “Bound.” The first song builds and collapses a twinkling surge, but it doesn’t pay off in the way most DMST pieces do. “And Boundless” is a relentless and unnerving march by comparison, built on imposing, siren~like guitar strums and crashing drums, this from a band frequently and accurately pegged as pastoral. Even at their loudest, DMST are never rollicking or spinning out of control; here they’ve harnessed and reigned in one of their most nerve~wracking works into an opus that winds around like a top prowling around a table.
★”“★ Elsewhere, “As Far As the Eye Can See” finds the band at their calmest, playing grazing tunes built around the type of filigree guitar~riffs~as~theme they’ve made into a hallmark. It’s an effect that produces an internal logic, in which a song can feel like an island with its own ecosystem, and an album an archipelago. It’s challenging to find your way inside. In the oscillation from serenity to cinematic triumph, their music can seep into your conscious and float around your daily life, not so much a soundtrack as a pliable accompaniment. Even when it’s not competing for your attention, Stubborn Persistent Illusions feels impossible to put down. ♠ http://pitchfork.com/
AllMusic Review by Paul Simpson; Score: ****
♠ http://www.allmusic.com/album/stubborn-persistent-illusions-mw0003040226
By Bekki Bemrose May 19th, 2017 / Score: 8
★”“★ It really is a rarity to find artists this far into their career, and after such a sustained break, sound so fresh and positive. Clearly, rather than lying dormant these individuals kept spinning along with the rest of the world, and their return is a great deal richer for it. As a genre post~rock is certainly stubborn and persistent in the face of rocky times for guitar music, but its value is no illusion if Do Make Say Think’s latest is anything to go by.
♠ http://drownedinsound.com/releases/19943/reviews/4151046
By Cole Firth, Published May 17, 2017 / Score: 9
♠ http://exclaim.ca/music/article/do_make_say_think-stubborn_persistent_illusions
Website: http://domakesaythink.com/
Bandcamp: https://domakesaythink.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoMakeSayThink/
Label: http://cstrecords.com/domakesaythink/
_____________________________________________________________