Long-time Chicago based sound artist Blake Edwards has developed an impressive resume in the experimental and noise scenes over the years, and this newest full length album is no different. Here he focuses on the manipulation and treatment of sounds recorded some 31 years ago, and the result is, for better or worse, a static gray wall of dour sounds that has its high points, but not as many as one would hope.
Crippled Intellect Productions
The first thing I thought immediately upon hearing the opening track "Invocation" was the late 1990s movement of dark, glacial sound art, much of which was sparked by Lustmord’s Heresy album. The track uses the same deep, subterranean ringing textures, like ancient sounds arising from a newly unearthed tomb. The ringing sounds are allowed to fully return to the surface, appearing sharp and metallic around the otherwise cavernous rock.
"Compression (False Limbs)" keeps the deep ringing but adds flanged croaks and other textures, creating an entire microscopic universe that is being observed sonically. The piece is mostly understated, but hollow noisy ambience infringes on that dynamic as the track comes to its close.
The long "High Silence Into The Earth" begins much more expansive, with deep, low register thuds and tiny sounds deep in the distance. It is a track with microscopic changes, which are almost too small: the variations are so far apart that it unfortunately fades into the background more often than it should. The same with the quiet, tortured sounds of "Jackal," which, even with the high frequency intrusions remains too overly dour to be compelling.
The stuttering, panned samples and hollow ding of "Breath of Corruption" at times is reminiscent of harsher noise being played at a lower volume, but with a swirling, almost psychedelic quality to it, helping it stand apart from the otherwise snowy sound field. The closing "High Silence Into the Winds" acts as a reprise to the long "High Silence Into the Earth", but allows almost musical loops to be heard through the reverberations and audio grime.
This is not a bad album by any means, but to me it is simply too monochromatic in approach and calls to mind a past genre of music that I personally burnt myself out on a number of years back. There are some unique sounds to be found here, but unfortunately they are few and far between, there is simply too much hollow reverb and processed samples here as filler that obscures the best moments.
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