ARC

Feral

Arcolepsy/Worthy Records (2003)

ARC, who brought us the very memorable and limited Repercussion disc not long ago, return with their first "studio" disc--an opportunity to see what this experimental combo can do with home recording technology at their disposal. I'd previously pegged ARC as an improvisational collective, with a breadth of sonic ingenuity that surprised and entranced me from the word "go" on Repercussion. Their new disc Feral manages to keep the improvised flavor of their earlier material, with an edge of composed or predetermined sound that makes the simple setup of guitars, drums, and various percussions feel more alive, distant, and exotic.

Feral begins with "Trepidation," a simple melange of electronic drone, shakers, and tribal percussion. The effect is of hidden power, of a beast quickly spiriting through a jungle or veldt--not chaotic wildness, but a zen-like, instinctive, animal drive; an important distinction. This beast lives in some animal dreamtime with underlying peace beneath the feral violence. Shadows of O Yuki Conjugate fall heavily on this track, which ends far too quickly. Next is "Space to Run" which continues the fine percussive drive, this time adding a jaunty, improvised guitar "jangle" and muted cymbal atmosphere. There's something elemental about this track, reminding me of bands like AMP and Flying Saucer Attack--bands that pursue a distinctly ambient muse, despite their traditional rock backgrounds. "Emergence" drops the tribal elements altogether, in favor of incredibly resonant Roy Montgomery styled guitar playing, backed with strange experimental trilling. This is a highlight of the disc, as it manages to be sweetly earthed and at the same time lysergic; a strength we also see in Montgomery's best material. If you can imagine a Temple IV that threatens to disintegrate at any moment into chaotic particles, you're somewhere near the sublime atmospheres here. "Morphosis" shows what would happen if the music did indeed disintegrate, as string instruments are bowed creepily over a low looped drone reminding me of Andrew Chalk's strange work. Here, an unusual hinge-bodied insect slithers out of its human guise, ending the union where a larger, more malevolent beast lived impossibly within its smaller, soft host. "Untitled" begins quietly with tablas and other percussions resembling some ceremony in miniature. A tiny Cornel Wilde pursued by African warriors over a tiny landscape; an entire film distilled into five and a half minutes. Finally, "Nested" is the wonderful capstone with a track quite unlike the rest of the album. Strange electronic, broken percussives, almost glitchy in nature, punctuate a celestial drone and wistful guitar atmospherics. We're back in the luscious dreamtime of the earliest track on the disc, but are somehow even deeper inside than that. "Nested" swoops and swells prettily over fourteen and a half minutes, closing a diverse and memorable album.

Feral reinforces my opinion that ARC are making some of the better tribal-experimental-ambient music I've heard lately. While nothing here knocked my socks off, as ARC's clear antecedents O Yuki Conjugate did, all is very practiced and a pleasure to listen to--though the album would be much improved with professional quality production. The tracks here progress very little over their length, making for a somewhat static listen--however, I find that each is satisfying enough on its own merits that no track ever wears out its welcome (especially the fine "Nesting"). In all, Feral is a terrific album by newcomers whose best work is clearly ahead of them.

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ALIO DIE

Khen Introduce Silence

Hic Sunt Leones (2004)

 

ALIO DIE & SAFFRON WOOD

The Sleep of Seeds

Hic Sunt Leones (2004)

 

ALIO DIE & ZEIT

Sunja

Hic Sunt Leones (2004)

The time between Alio Die's last work, Il Tempo Magico di Saturnia Pavonia</a>, and now was clearly the calm before the storm. Three new titles of Stefano Musso's work, both solo and in collaboration, are now available to the ritual-ambient listening public.

First up is Khen Introduce Silence, comprised of all new solo Alio Die tracks, all derived from the sound of the khen--a mouth organ from Southeast Asia. "Organ" is an adequate description of this instrument in the context of this album--when processed by Alio Die, it begins to sound reminiscent of a sonorous and otherworldly church organ. Its sound is dissonant and tonal, close in spirit to the Forrest Fang track "Some Unfinished Business" on Gongland. This dissonance is jarring at first, but once the listener relaxes into the sounds, it begins to make a strange sort of tuneful sense. The opening track, "Puntar orecchio alle sfere" immerses us immediately into this strange tonal world, with environmental noises accompanied by the strange hooning of the processed khen, which, after a time, begins to twinkle in an otherworldly way. The sounds are unabashedly organic, as with the rest of Alio Die's work, managing to create a strange natural stillness from what is essentially a man-made element. Things get really ambient on track three, "Accarezzando soma come si fa con una pituma," when the khen is processed down into a slow stillness as the different drones wax and wane--the khen is still recognizable here, but it is used in a soft, almost phased, manner, creating an ululating zone of tones. "Introduce Silence" manages to transcend the khen origins, making the sounds drone even more softly--taking this ethnic instrument and bending it to the will of Musso, in order to create a zen-trance state of quiet ambience. The final track "In Vulvica Risonanza" is perhaps one of the most exciting and experimental pieces Musso has done to date. It begins with a swirling drone and heartbeat vibrations that gradually give way to a frog croak--which quickly transitions to khen harmonics--which blend back into the swirling drone--which transition back (with the frog croak) into the khen harmonics. These two loops continue thus for five minutes, basically the same two strips of sound, making what is essentially an eternal Mobius strip of music--activated by your CD player's repeat button. The transition is jarring at first between loops, but eventually, after a few cycles, it lulls you into a trance of repeated sonic elements. I've never heard anything like this on an environmental ambient recording and the effect is truly awe-inspiring.

Khen Introduce Silence, while maintaining a certain sameness between the seven tracks, integrates an unusual instrument into a shockingly beautiful ambient setting. Alio Die continues to make work that progresses into newer terrains, while still maintaining the sonic touchstones that made the music so exciting in the first place. This disc is like a magic window into an ancient time where the sound of a human instrument and nature around meld into otherworldly harmonies.

Next is The Sleep of Seeds, a collaboration with Saffron Wood (who listeners might remember from way back on 1993's The Promises of Silence compilation). This is a fifty minute long meditation on the growth of plantlife from seed to above-ground entity. This is an appropriate area of musical exploration because the work of Alio Die has always been about the microworlds of sound usually ignored by casual listeners. Why not focus on an area of life normally unseen, transmuted into musical impressions? Different from most recent Alio Die albums, this collaboration contains three sprawling tracks of ambience, rather than short sonic impressions. The first, "The Sleep of Seeds," is remarkably abstract--harking to the early days of Alio Die's work, when it resembled Ora and Art of Primitive Sound. This track is a twenty minute revolving of experimental elements, strange percussives, unknown electronic noises, dissonant textures. The sleep of seeds is clearly an alien slumber, with quiet dreams. The track dithers on improvisationally, ending with haunting bass drones and strange, muted cries. "Awakening in a New Form" is not remarkably different from the first track, though toward the end a transition is made to deeper levels of drone. The underworld life of the seed has expanded into more broad and beautiful terrain, as it stretches its nascent tendrils towards the sun. Finally, "A Dream of Mother Ground" expands even further into strange whistling, tribal flutes, and marvelous water ambience--the plant is reaching high into the air, splashed with nature's water, photosynthesizing in a wild, natural life-orgy. This is a highlight of the album--there are no humans to interrupt the cycle; this is pure pre-history at work; when plants covered the landmasses of Earth, not choking the land, but an endless soft green caress.

This is a singularly understated album, very much harkening back to the early Alio Die days of unusual environmental ambient. This will appeal most to fans of Alio Die's earliest material, though I personally find it to be somewhat of a throwback to music Musso has already expanded and improved upon. Perhaps not the most essential part of this trio, but an interesting trip nonetheless.

Finally, we approach the collaboration with new artist Zeit (perhaps named after the Tangerine Dream album?), Sunja. "Approach" is an adequate word, because the overall impression of this album is of a marvelously long and dreamlike journey. Sunja is only two mammoth tracks; two legs of the journey towards spiritual transcendence. "The Gates Are Open" is a wonderfully tranced out dronescape of harmonic khen and accordion (processed, of course) with zither ruminations by Musso that resemble the triumphant El-Hadra album by Klaus Wiese, Mathias Grassow, and Ted De Jong. This is a half-hour of first rate ambient music; the type of stuff that ushers you into a dreamstate of bright sun and the odors of nature and forestland. Strange birdcalls pierce the veil of ambience every once in a while, gently bringing you out of reverie, only to lapse back in just as gently. The different flavors of this track are intense; it's beautifully paced, never seeming too long, allowing you to bask in its glow until the next track. It's hard to believe, but "At the Threshold of Sunja" is even longer and more intense. The sound elements are the same, but are used less sparingly to create a sensual dream-reality.

The otherworldly swirl of Sunja is potent, making this one of the best ritual-ambient discs I've heard in the last few years. Such simple elements create a work of staggering power--I'm duly impressed with this material and give it my highest recommendation. I'm satisfied truncating my description to give you time to pick up the disc, which is limited to 1000 copies. Don't miss this one, it's clearly going to be on my top ten for 2004.

In total, Alio Die and his collaborators have given us a worthy triptych of albums as a gift for 2004. While none of the releases push Musso's sound into new terrain, this makes them no less exciting and essential. Casual Alio Die fans will probably do best with Sunja or Khen Introduce Silence, but I heartily recommend them all to fans of Alio Die's original and inimitable style of soundscaping.

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THE CIRCULAR RUINS

Empathy TestEmpathy Test

Databloem (2003)

Empathy Test is a fantastically loaded title for the latest from Anthony Kerby, recording as The Circular Ruins. As science fiction oriented ambient fans may know, the empathy test was the technique used to determine if a "person" was in reality an android replicant in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and featured in the film Blade Runner, based on that novel). In short, the test determined via made-up emotional scenarios whether or not the subject was a human through the subject's emotional and biological responses to the scenarios themselves. When applied to the concept of electronic music created by humans on solely "virtual" instrumentation, the parallel is clear. Is this music an artificial construct trying to be human?

Where Kerby's previous releases (Conjunction was reviewed by myself some months ago) were chaotic, synthetic, buzzing works of ambient electronics--beautiful, but not altogether humanist--Empathy Test is a less dense, more melodic album reinforcing the notion that there may really be a person behind all the synthetic textures.

The tracks are short on Empathy Test, allowing a more song-oriented feel than previous TCR works which often hinged on ten-plus minute epics. We begin with a lovely introduction to the lighter side of TCR with "Empathy Test," a track reviewed here via the Databloem compilation, Collection 2: Moving. Needless to say, Kerby allows his Namlook fixation to come to the fore here, creating a lovely Fax-like ambient track that transcends both Kerby and Namlook styles of electronic. This is an absolute highlight of the album, and a great start. Next is "Over Fields of Light" featuring a repetitive techno sequence overlaid with buzzing and chattering electronic textures and nature samples, chopped up beyond recognition. Kerby synth-solos on top of all of this, once again in a distinctly Namlook style. Without the context of knowing what artist we are listening to, Kerby's music on this album is like hearing a heavyweight Namlook without all the filler tracks he tends to clutter his discography with. "Recollections" tones down the textures for an unusually spare atmospheric track which functions as a sort of darker, older brother of Saul Stokes's recent work. The longest track on the album, "The Interpretation of Dreams," (which Kerby describes as "a Freudian opus" in his liner notes) is as epic in nine minutes as Namlook and Inoue were on their "The Art of Dream" track on 2350 Broadway 2. A sequenced melody is accompanied by fine soloing and very low vocal samples. While the track doesn't shift appreciably over its length, the soloing and synth backgrounds are interesting and diverse enough to hold interest. At the end of the journey, lovely Turkish sounding synth-percussion takes over, harkening to the glory days of mid-nineties Faxlabel works. "Salient Features" reminds of Kerby's side project Lammergeyer with stratospheric and dramatic synth pads coupled with muted techno-percussives. This is another favorite track of mine--propulsive, somewhat melancholy, and always subtly shifting. "Eccentric Souvenirs" is quieter with synth-washes and drones that never seem to gel. It's bubbly music, but not particularly engaging, even with delightful vocal samples here and there. "A Little Different from Reality" (no kidding!) is also rather understated, approaching the glitchy digitalism of recent electronic artists, but tempering the experimentation with lovely synth drones and strange textures. Tetsu Inoue fans will find a lot to enjoy here, as this approaches the natural artificiality (how's that for an oxymoron?) of World Receiver. Finally, "The Seven Sisters" brings the album to a close with a satisfying anthemic ambient piece; a softly pulsing tone poem.

Anthony P. Kerby continues his streak of excellent, engaging electronic albums with Empathy Test, this time allowing his admitted influences of Namlook and the Faxlabel to define the sound of the album. In some respect, this attention to the "Fax style" constrains Kerby's usually wild inventiveness and experimentation (all the while still maintaining listenability). The Circular Ruins is still the premiere outlet for Kerby's music, but it seems to me that this work touches too heavily on past glories of classic mid-nineties ambient work. That said, it's been a long time since the Fax label, and, arguably, Namlook himself, has released a work of such high caliber. It can be said that Kerby's beaten those past masters at their own game with Empathy Test. While I still feel the quintessential TCR album is Realm of Possibility, Empathy Test is no slouch, continuing the fine development of an exciting ambient artist well worth watching.

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OÖPHOI & TAU CETI

Subterrania

Nextera (2003)

2000's Celestial Geometries was the last we heard from the collaborative work of Oöphoi and fellow Italian sound-artist Enrico Cosimi: Tau Ceti. That was an intriguing work of deep space drones favored in many space music circles, though I personally felt it to be a bit too static and vaporous for frequent listenings. That Cydonian paean to Martian landscapes (and the "face" on Mars!) is now followed-up by Subterrania, a work that focuses more upon inner landscapes, though these territories are no less vast and foreboding.

What sounds like processed flutes, slowed down to near non-motion, begins "In the Wake of Ouranos." This beautiful and sonorous atmosphere is joined by another more recognizable flute, intertwining in a gorgeous ambient harmony. This is quite a change from Celestial Geometries, which was just as deep, but far less inviting (as one might imagine when thinking of the cold vacuum of space). The flutes get more intense as they wrap around one another, punctuated by crystalline sounds at the edge of audibility. We're in an underground cavern, but the sun and fresh air are not far from view, even if just a pinpoint of light far, far above. "Vril-Ya" includes the atmospheres from the previous track, but expands upon them into more resonant and creepy areas. Icy drones remind us that it's cold under the earth, especially cold the deeper we travel. Echoes of Oöphoi's Athlit are here, lending a slightly reverent feel to the supremely dark (but not uninviting) proceedings. "Omphalos" has an almost Pete Namlook feel to it, circa 62 Eulengasse, but with a Spirals of Time psychedelic phasing. There's also a reminder of the tonal wash of Klaus Wiese's synth work, certainly a strong influence of both Oöphoi and Tau Ceti. It's a short track that transitions directly into "Aph-Lin" (sorry, but I can offer no help as to what these titles mean). Synths that sound like Tibetan singing bowls drone brightly along with the subterranian ambience of the earlier tracks. We're heading down, down, down, into the Earth's core--but we aren't sure whether the radiance ahead is the hidden sun of Pellucidar, or the molten core of the planet waiting to immolate us in its supreme heat. Perhaps both, though this oneiric journey offers no definite answers. We return to the thematic territory of track one--all harmonic flutes and crystal tinklings - but melded with mystical overtone vocals. This all proves to be a warm-up for the next track, the epic twenty-two minute "Rex Mundi." Dramatic synth lines give this the martial flair of a journey through the underworld, perhaps not a steaming jungle but a rocky ground dotted with outcroppings that could be domiciles. This is a fine example of drone ambience that goes somewhere - remaining largely static, though with a definite feel of forward motion. "Rex Mundi" is a little spooky, but mostly a haunting and mysterious journey into indefinable regions of the imagination. Finally, we reach "The Chamber of Eternity" with a little help from the practiced singing bowls of Klaus Wiese. The bowls gong softly, reverbed to infinity, melded with the soft influence of tracks one and two. We've reached some inner center, expanding and including the influence of our journey. The sounds of Wiese fade to leave the sonic work of Oöphoi & Tau Ceti alone, completing the sound-circle, allowing a perfect transition for a repeat play of this lovely, deep album.

Subterrania is the strongest work from Oöphoi since the first Nebula album and the marvelous Bardo. While the sound palette does not differ greatly over the album's length, its deep and mysterious tone never wears on your consciousness. This is a great disc to zone out to, and even better as accompaniment into the night's journey through slumber. While its dark and static nature make it a poor choice for those who prefer lighter and more outwardly listener-friendly ambience, I find Subterrania to be an accurate and compelling vision of underworlds and shadowy realms. Consistently inviting work from artists that seem to get better and better with each release.

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