here is a sort of romanticism about the ruined or the dilapidated. There is a subtle, sad glory contained in a ramshackle, leaning, old wooden structure half-glimpsed as you speed along some country back road on your way to wherever. Rotting, collapsing, growing moss and devoured by termites, these buildings have outlived their use to the society that built them, and are now in the process of returning to the earth which spawned them. Seeing them like this, easing towards collapse, is like watching death.


These are the moments that the Montreal collective Set Fire To Flames strives to capture. An offshoot of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the group -- which also features members of the Shalabi Effect -- is fixated on this concept. The documentation of dying buildings is its primary raison d’etré. The band’s debut, Sings Reign Rebuilder, was recorded in a dilapidated house at 14 Ontario Street in Montreal; this time around, the recordings were made in an old barn.


As with the first record, the two discs of this double album -- dubbed Telegraphs in Negative and Mouths Trapped in Static -- were the result of several days of nearly continuous jamming and experimentation. The reels of tape were later edited down to this sprawling but tightly constructed hour and a half-long set. The end result is a gorgeous and highly diverse album, an aural tour of society’s dregs. Its sparse, often foreboding music weaves in and out over the album’s surface, interspersed with field recordings that reveal the barn creaking, birds singing, and the group members shuffling around and talking.


As a unified listening experience, Telegraphs... works far more than Sings. Considering that the band has not played together as a full unit between the two sessions, the stylistic leaps they’ve made on their sophomore record are very surprising. Whereas Sings was rather inconsistent -- its moments of brilliance hidden amidst meandering jams and spoken word rants -- this record is far more direct. That is not to say that the band has made a pop record. This dense, introspective music still takes a long time to sink in -- on first (or even fifth) listen, there’s just way too much to absorb -- but once it does, its beauty and power are hard to escape.


Encompassing everything from meditative guitar solos that recall Godspeed’s “The Cowboy” (and, by extension, Ennio Morricone) to plaintive violin melodies to atonal haunted house atmospheres, the album’s first disc is incredibly varied. But all of these styles blend well together. Each note expresses the emotion of the band as they seek to capture the mood and personality of their recording environment. The sounds of the old barn flow through this music but never seem merely decorative or shallow. The rhythmic noise of something cranking on “Measure de Mesure” and the lovely lilt of birdsong heard from a distance on “Holy Throat Hiss Tracts to the Sedative-Hypnotic” are as musical as anything created by any of the players on the album. And despite the heavy presence of field recordings, the band never allows them to dominate the proceedings as they sometimes did on Sings. The focus here is always, clearly, on the interaction of these musicians, constantly experimenting and trying to reach their vision of perfection.


As the album progresses, it gains an almost oppressive weight. The second disc largely dispenses with the field recordings, favoring a series of increasingly dark and somber instrumentals. The playful howls and frantic bashing at the start of “Fukt Prekusiv – something about bad drugs” (could there be a better name for this Boredoms-esque thrash-fest?) give way to a Krautrock-inspired groove that sets up the lengthy feedback drone of the next song, “Sleep Maps.” As the disc draws to a close, violins and distant horns blend with shimmering guitars on “And the Birds Are About to Bust Their Guts With Singing” and “Rites of Spring Reverb,” creating a beautifully desolate mood reminiscent of A Silver Mt. Zion.


Throughout all of this, the emphasis is on atmosphere and tone. These musicians share a common outlook that bleeds throughout all of their music, that is audible in every note is the aura of mystique that has been generated around the Montreal collective surrounding Godspeed and Shalabi. This is music created in a state of complete social isolation, harkening back to the stoner collective approach to rock music first formulated by Faust. As SFTF continue to explore the unique interactions of their massive ensemble, they’re bound to keep improving. Here they’ve created a lushly textured blend of different styles and made a work of often stunning beauty.