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Fossil Aerosol Mining Company, "17 Years in Ektachrome"
Extremely enigmatic and sporadically active over the past 30 years, Fossil Aerosol Mining Project maintains their secrecy on this new album of decaying material and found recordings. Heavily based on the use of ancient magnetic tape and careful mixing and processing, the result is a strange, sometimes dark but always captivating bit of audio art that emphasizes mystery above all else.
Songs such as "From the Lowlands" most clearly demonstrate this penchant for employing fragmenting, decaying sounds.Backwards tapes and what sounds like moody ambient electronics make up the bulk of the piece, with delays and pitch bending emphasizing this decaying feeling."Lowlands Hybrid" has the same feel to it, but more stripped down to a spacious ambient drone.
Field recordings act as a major element in a few of these pieces, but mostly as an instrument rather than the sole focus."Transparency of Limestone" sounds like a walk through nature, with chirpy birds and buzzing insect recordings receiving just the right amount of processing to make them unique.The familiar sounds are soon deconstructed into an expanse of crunchy textural noises and electronic space.The lengthy "Ice Falls/Taking on Water" uses some natural sounds with a synth like expanse, to put it somewhere between field recordings and conventional music.The ambiguity is only enhanced with the clanking machinery that ends up acting as a rhythmic counterpoint.
"Systems Clock" also demonstrates a little bit of a rhythm, interspersed with what sounds like vinyl record surface noise and recordings of idling engines.Extremely unconventional, but these found sounds are shaped expertly by these mysterious composers into something memorable.Bits of dialog and what sounds like radio communications on "Backbone 1982" give it a different, more dissonant feel overall.Dense, heavy passages of what sounds like a mass of electronics lead it towards a darker, more oppressive sound compared to the remainder of the record.
The found recordings and rotting tapes that make up the core of 17 Years in Ektachrome make for a mysterious, sometimes disorienting recording that leaves just enough that can be recognized audible, while building up a world of ambiguity all around.Coupled with the enigmatic nature of the project, the result is a fascinating record that features layers of mystery that are not easily unraveled.
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