Blending concrete sounds with electronics and homemade instruments, the success of Anakrid's latest album hinges on its unpredictability. New, strange sounds lurk around every corner, ready to subvert expectations by adding a spontaneous rhythm, dropping the volume, or the arrival a sudden arrhythmic crash. The result is a frequently bewildering yet thoroughly entertaining recording.
Anakrid gets the most out of stereo, creating a dynamic sense of movement and dynamism between the channels. In fact, there are so many different sounds between left and right that sometimes the tracks seem governed by schizophrenia. This is especially apparent on "The Examinatione," which is almost like two separate mono songs added together to create stereo. Yet they're not entirely dissimilar, their abstract qualities complementing each other for mesmeric effect.
While the album's tracks don't bear a whole lot of relation to each other, they do have some things in common. Metallic overtones form the backdrop of several songs, while beats appear with some regularity, especially on the latter half of the album on tracks like "The Guttenberg Galaxy" and "Cinder Your Eye." If anything, it's the group's aesthetic sense that gives the album its coherence.
Although humor isn't a huge part of this album, glimmers of it come through the juxtaposition of unlikely and unrelated sound sources. It's hard not to smile when the imploding industrial rhythms of "Limited Liability Processing Plant" give way to the soft melody of "Lies on a Tranquil Brow" or when the disruptive squeaks and blurts on "The Many Voices of Reason" lead into the pulsing bass throb of "The Outer Beings."
Far from a hazy collage, there's a sense that everything on Banishment Rituals comes from a high level of purposeful articulation and control. With songs ranging from a minute and a half to nearly seven minutes, there's no room for filler here. With little space between tracks, the album moves in a breezy manner, giving the misconception that all this hard work was natural and effortless.
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