Illusion Of Safety, "In Opposition Of Our Acceleration"

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27 January 2002

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Albums and Singles

The ambient/electronic/noise collage veterans' latest CD features eightunreleased improv pieces recorded live in Europe and the U.S., plus onestudio piece that also appears on the 'Wiretapper 7' CD compilation.

Sometimes IOS music can be jarring, such as on their 1998 CD 'BadKarma,' with little sound pranks that I found to be humorous. However,this new CD flows beautifully, without any abrupt changes. The darkambience is derived from electronics, noise, and occasionally musicalinstruments, as you may expect if familiar with theirwork.
At live shows, I find that watching the musicians fiddle with buttonsand knobs is distracting. But with eyes closed, the noise may take mesomewhere in my imagination, using the sounds as cues to define a placeor a feeling. Many pieces on this CD achieve this effect. For example,while listening to track four (live in Stockholm), I feel like I'm in astrange old building, where the vacuum cleaner is running non-stop in anearby room, while in my immediate environment are dueling rhythmicclick-scrape noises and an odd chord twanging repeatedly. Then abackground machine din grows and overcomes the other sounds and Iwonder how I'll ever get out of this hellhole. I escape as track five(live at a radio station in Evanston, Illinois) begins with another dinfrom the machine room while a consistent rhythm is provided by a soundreminiscent of a slow drip from a leaky faucet, only each water dropseems to be hitting a drum surface rather than a sink. The densebackground din varies, with swirling pain sounds that sometimes couldbe a drawn-out AWWWWWW cry by some beast (human or other), but what Iimagine as wailing is actually just another electronic sound, not asampled cry. When the train finally comes, it's almost a relief: afamiliar blaring train whistle, one of the few recognizable samples onthis CD. Other pieces on the CD are lighter and sparser, like the pianocut-up that opens the CD. There are also some that feature a heavybuzzing sound, or a high-pitched drone.
I enjoy most of the selections here and feel that IOS fans will not be disappointed. -

samples:

Illusion Of Safety, "In Opposition Of Our Acceleration"

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