Fully divested of their signature drones, Growing explores rythmic loops and unnatural electronics. An acquaintance of mine has expressed his dismay that Growing turned away from their established sound, but I applaud their efforts. The result is easily their most engaging and unique album yet.Judging from their early work, it would be difficult to think of a more evocative name for this band. It perfectly described their deliberate, serene drones. The fullness of their sound suggested the slow creep of vegetation, or a warm primordial sea. But in the years that followed Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, Growing gradually distanced themselves from drone-based composition. This has culminated in Vision Swim. The new Growing doesn't evoke organic processes at all, but rather the incessant clatter of the big city. Instead of static drones and washes of sound, this album is constructed with squawking beeps and lurching swells that remind me more of electric appliances and communications chatter than anything suggested by the name Growing.
The second track, appropriately named "Onanon," is built on synthetic bleeps and drilling blasts of noise over a ratcheting rhythm track. The song could have become monotonous and grating, but subtle rhythm changes keep it fresh. Halfway through, delayed harmonic swells enter and the mood softens. From this point, the song could have progressed into a murky drone, but the chaotic tones re-enter, and the song ends with jackhammer-like sweeps of noise panning across the speakers. "Morning Drive" lives up to its automotive themed title, a metaphor for driving in sound. The song utilizes the Doppler Effect cleverly. The sounds here echo and bend like the distant roar of engine noise and whipped up air heard at a race track. When guitar loops enter the mix, their notes bend and fade in and out just like the samples in the foreground. These dissolve into a warm cloud of reversed swells and purring electronics, suggesting a tranquil ending to the drive.
Growing throws in a dud on each their albums, and this one is not an exception. The track "Emseepee" consists of a rubbery synth-bass loop and electronic squeals that immediately made me think of cybernetic pigs. The sounds themselves are not unpleasant, but they begin to sound stale because of a lack of dynamics. Fortunately the track is short, and some listeners might appreciate it as an interlude between the longer pieces on the album. The closing track "Lightfoot" returns to a more solid drone, but it retains the album's dynamism and fits comfortably with the more spastic pieces it follows. Deeply reverbed static and whirring tones pan across the speaker, bending and expanding in gentle succession. The tone is luminous but unsteady, like bright city lights reflected off ocean waves. Tremolo effects cut into the sound, whipping up swells of static like the propeller of a speed-boat. As the effects become more prominent in the mix, the music disintigrates into short fragments that pop in and out abruptly, tearing the song apart altogether.
My first impression was that Vision Swim sounded drunk and the arrangements awkward, but successive listens reveal its unique structure. This is a dynamic album filled with bouncing rhythms and mercurial progressions. Except for "Lightfoot," there is nothing here that could be considered drone music at all. Instead of holding a tone for minutes at a time, Growing throw out sounds and then immediately pull them away, changing them each time they re-appear. Even the underlying loops mutate, growing louder then gently melting away into gentle atmospherics.
Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria have introduced a new level of detail and dynamism, and it animates this record, giving it a character that escapes genre classifications. It would have been easy for Growing set their loop pedals to play enough drones to last for ten records, and that might be enough to satisfy CD-R chasing isolationists, but I think they're trying for something more universal. They have managed to surprise me with each release, always a step away from my expectations. Growing's music has always been evocative of real objects and sensations. They have used sound as a representation of life in full instead of a narrow taste or subculture. Regardless of the genre that they work in, they continue to transcend categorization, which makes them more important than the sum of their components.
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