Xardas

Friday, January 27, 2012

Another TRIOC Review

Here’s a nice flowing ambient album from the Small Doses camp – meaning that the artwork and design is top-notch. The design features symmetrical glitchy computer graphics multiplied to a thousand and cut to hell. Kind of strange because the sounds here are anything but reflective of the art work.
Dense beds of sounds – sometimes harmonic and sometimes noisy – are layered into a 30 minute exercise in ambient drone with some industrial influence here as the track grows. Meandering guitar that is featured quite prominently makes this material remind me a lot of Tribes of Neurot which is a compliment because they are one of my favorite projects. The delivery of ambient atmospheres is consistent throughout with the industrial elements being just enough to add a sinister edge, yet at the same time keeping things atmospheric.
Although The Ritual Inclusion of Code is one long track, it has movements like it is split into 3 tracks. The last part of the album are more electronic with little guitar influence yet still features a nice mix of airy beds, electronic pulses and haunting pitched drones. The track moves along nicely and evolves where it needs to.
This is a solid effort and great show of care and consideration for the composition. As my first exposure to the project I would say they have a lot of potential and have created a full recording with impressive breadth and depth.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The review below reminded me of the days back when I recorded my very first demo. Everyone felt extremely pissed off and offended for one reason or another and they just wanted to trash it down all while not knowing what they really wanted to say. Nevertheless a very enjoyable read.

The Inarguable

There's a special category of artist I'd never quite realized existed until I began thinking about this release. They don't have a name, a manifesto, or self-serving documentaries. They're the "intellectual metal kid's noise artists."
I could certainly include artists like Locrian in this, and they may be a good entry point. They're great. They do half-black metal now, but back in the day they were the building, fulfilling wave of sound that you could find blessing scattered metal shows around Chicago. They're into noise, they're into metal, and they're not quite metal, so the metal kids think they're a noise band. (Just to be clear, they're not.)
20.Sv and Deadwood are the side of this I've never quite understood. They bill themselves as harsh noise. 20.Sv in particular had a big publicity stunt in the metal scene (see where I'm going with this?) getting allegedly declared a terrorist act in Lebanon. But while I've run into metalheads enthusing over these noise artists again and again, both Daniel Jansson (Deadwood) and Osman Arabi (20.Sv) make a sort of muted, almost ambient expression of soft, round static. They're quiet and soothing, even if you play them "loud as hell."
Locrian's labelmates on small doses, The Ritual Inclusion of Code is apparently a collaboration between Deadwood and 20.Sv. Alone, they always just disappointed me. Together, they make me think "Oh, I could do this on a laptop. And I wouldn't be proud of it or try to release it." Beta Wave Nemisis (do they realize that's a spelling error?) sounds like my early, incompetent noise project made halfway into ambient with Audacity reverb and delay. There are actually childish clean guitar noodles partway through, an example of aesthetic self-undermining that even I never stooped to.
Big names don't mean real music.