Beta-Lactam Ring
This handsomely packaged slabof vinyl contains nearly 40 minutes of enticingly obscure, cinematicear candy, and is as experimental an album as EKS has ever recorded,with the possible exception of Textures of Illumina.Simultaneously harking back to the earliest of early LPD and EKScassette experiments, and looking forward towards new and tantalizinglyesoteric future trajectories, this LP moves through a sequence ofnightmarish sound dramas with a puzzling but eerily familiardream-logic that sounds like the product of pure Surrealist automatism.The album's black-and-white, Max Ernst-style sleeve graphic depicts acraggy tree populated with unblinking human eyes instead of leaves,with three eye-shaped diecuts revealing three bluegreen eyes peekingout from the inner sleeve. Just as in symbolist paintings, the ocularimagery here seem to instruct the listener to look within, and to thinkof the sounds within as primarily visual rather than strictly auralphenomena. Everywhere on O Darkness, EKS seems to be takingupon himself the misery of the world, evoking current events in hismorbid, pessimistic opening monologue: "When the bell tolls at twelve,my thoughts will go towards those who were simply at the wrong place atthe wrong time. I will concentrate, focus, mourn in my own peculiarway. And I honestly think I can keep it up." With this simultaneouslyfunny and depressing soliloquy, EKS kicks off the record's first side("The Rim of the Pit"), which introduces a vivid urban soundscapebustling with noisy streetcars, the distant tinkling of soft piano jazzfrom an open apartment window, hurried footsteps accompanied by aseries of booming bass throbs that seem to prophesy a vague and gloomyfuture full of dread and anxiety. It's hard to tell if ole Ed hasgathered these sounds from period films or radio broadcasts or if theseare field recordings he has gathered and spliced together; it's equallydifficult to discern if the incidental, maudlin Hollywood soundtrackmusic heard throughout the album is sampled or created in the studio byEKS and Silverman. Either way, it's a real head-trip, palpably real andhauntingly nostalgic, vintage sounds that Boards of Canada would givetheir two left testicles to be able to make. One of the movementsinvolves a fractured, programmed beat assembled from cut-up femalevoices, resonant church bells ringing, a lonesome foghorn, afascinatingly unorthodox use of sequencers that recalls Nurse WithWound's "Yagga Blues," among other things. EKS continues his paranoidinterior monologues over a series of shrill, jarring car alarm bleats:"I was stuck between the 15th and 16th floors when it happened. Itsounded bad out there. Whatever the damn thing was it behavedmethodically. One room at a time." The last time I'd heard such aterrifying horror story masquerading as experimental music was Current93 and Thomas Ligotti's I Have a Special Plan For This World.Side two ("Wings Trapped in Amber") involves a further descent into themaelstrom, with anonymous passengers boarding a train to who knowswhere, varispeed bouncing ball rhythms juxtaposed with ocean sounds,laughing children, a street musician and encroaching drones that giveAlan Splet's subterranean Eraserhead sound environments a runfor their money. Unexpectedly out of the din comes a clattery,ramshackle group tribal improvisation placed amidst a jungle full ofsquawking birds. By the end of this tangibly real dream-space, it tookme some time to touch down and reconnect with my "real" time and place.O Darkness! O Darkness! is a conduit into EKS' nightmares, which depending on your sensibilities, could be either a gift or a curse.samples:
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