Year: 2025
Label: Zoharum
We reviewed Polish That’s How I Fight’s Movement Three some time ago (here) with no uncertain words of praise. The conceptually enticingly vague album convinced us with its cosmic, serene and psychedelic beauty.
As such, we welcomed a return to ostensibly the same seas of ambiance with Movement Three Continuum. Apparently, according to the promo sheet, these are tracks from the same sessions, constituting an alternative take on the same creative process. But, at the same time, an album that stands on its own feet, not just as a continuation of the “parent album.”
Well, let’s see!
Rather obviously, the first thing one notices is that yes indeed, this is the same That’s How I Fight and the same type of floating, undulating ambient expression as on Movement Three. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case.
Quite soon one notices that Continuum is markedly different.
And this is the key to Continuum, the juxtaposition and tension of similarity and dissimilarity, at least for those who’re familiar with Movement Three. It is the same kind of slowly evolving, layered ambient of cosmic ebb and flow, where melody and structure give way to a flowing, undulating and decidedly psychedelic expression. But Continuum is slightly more abrasive, slightly harsher, slightly more concrete and less abstract, slightly darker than Movement Three.
I’ve racked my brain trying to come up with a way to describe in what way the sibling albums flow together and apart. And this is what I came up with:
Movement Three and Movement Three Continuum are not two sides of the same coin, or night and day. They are layers of the same thing.
Or currents. Movement Three is the serene and peaceful surface current of a vast cosmic sea: inviting, warm, lulling, safe, bright. Currents that peacefully carry you where you need to go. Continuum is the undercurrent running deeper: colder, more unpredictable, darker, stronger. It pulls you in different directions from the surface. In a way, more fraught with peril.
To carry this metaphor a bit further, where Movement Three is the undisturbed surface of the ocean, where harmony reigns between the sea and the bodies of land within it, Continuum’s area is littered with jutting subsurface crags, rocks and formations; a substratum of more discernible instrumentation disturbing the serenity. The percussion is more prominent than on Movement Three, and instruments such as bass, piano and guitar will play actually structural and musical sections far more frequently.
Despite having a certain darker timbre to it, Continuum doesn’t veer into dark ambient territory. Despite its darker edge, Continuum is very clearly a sibling to Movement Three’s ambient. As promised, it offers a differing perspective: slightly less abstract, slightly more musical, slightly more industrial (check out the industrial rumblings on 36).
And it does stand on its own two legs. However, having spent a lot of time with the preceding sibling or companion album, I do find it hard to separate the two. Continuum doesn’t require Movement Three to justify its existence, but at the same time its impossible to see the two as separate entities. Another paradox.
Ultimately, I preferred the serenity and cosmic psychedelia of Movement Three. Continuum’s less abstract, more active soundscapes fall a hair’s breadth after for me. But just that, a hair’s breadth. This is another very fine piece of mysterious ambient from the Polish group.
Only Death Is Real 