It begins so quietly it’s barely there. Drifting ambience, gentle tones... then, in the distance, a heavily echoed clatter of soft percusion... warm, soft currents slowly build and wash over soothingly...
Before too long, though, some disquieting samples drift in and out of the mix. There are more echoes of percussion, like droplets of water falling deep in an immense cave. Ripples disturb the smooth surface and there are unknown currents running almost silently beneath. When a voice sings ‘everything’s going to be fine’ it seems rather less than convincing: despite the gentle synths and string sounds, there’s a menace lurking not far below. This is particularly evidenced on ‘I Am a Crooked Man,’ a 10-minuter that forges an expansive soundscape, and while the pulsating beat is distinctly dance-orientated, the grating echoed guitars that veer in and out cast long shadows, before it all breaks down and the rhythm goes tribal in the last minute in a most unexpected fashion. Elsewhere, notably on ‘Pissing About,’ there are pulsating beats behind looping chimes, but however laid-back and dance orientated it gets, there’s always something more sinister in the shadows.
|
Track 7, ‘History is Made in the Night’ sees the smooth and gentle soundscapes disturbed by unsettling scrapes and drones that swell and build before disappearing again. And so it goes...
There are brief interludes between the lengthier tracks, and the tracks segue together to form one mesmeric whole, in which blips and glitchy broken beats shuffle and snake in and start to work their way around and really begin to burrow into one’s brain. This album’s effects are subtle, even subliminal at times, but in terms of atmosphere, this really is an effective release, that has the capacity not only to be mood-enhancing, but mood-altering.
|
