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LABEL PROFILE SILENTES Stefano Gentile, chief mover of Silentes, has steered his shadowy sub-label, offspring of Amplexus, that long-standing refuge for ambienteers of a particular shade, into new and diverse territories in the ambient expanse. As a name, Silentes (pronounced sil-ent-ACE) has duality of reference: it can be seen as alluding to Kim Cascone’s seminal 90s imprint, Silent (some of whose releases are revisited by the Silentes catalogue). At the same time, for Latin lovers, it is translatable—suggestively—as “the silent things” or “the silent ones.” Etymology aside, its musical scope is certainly wider-ranging than was that of Amplexus in its mid-late 90s heyday, and Gentile has clearly spent some time trawling the outer spatial realms or seeking deeper-lying pearls to bring into the fold. Which leads us first to keynote Silentes artist Rod Modell, who has long been a seeker of sorts; one in search of the deepest pulse echo-chords. His Deepchord project, with co-researcher Mike Schommer, is the sound of that search. Through the aquatic, the static, the pneumatic, and the lowest of ends, justifying the minimal means, recursions have been spun into virtual eternity. Now, Vibrasound: the Deepchord Years 1999-2004 distills the essence of his semi-defunct vinyl-based project into 70 digitally-encoded minutes. The affinities to Basic Channel have invited plagiarism charges, but these are short-sighted, for BC’s was no virgin Berlin birth. You could see more than traces of Detroit in a techno-slice of that Deutscher da-da-dna. Deepchord may have oozed “Berlin” spiritually, but the Berliners had previously made clear musical “Ich bin ein Detroiter” declarations, and Modell has the location authenticity. Not only this, but, as a long-time practitioner in psychoactive ambient marginality (see later), he’d been plying his audio-alchemical trade well before these German Johan-come-latelys. Deepchord, then was, properly viewed, his reinvention, appropriating and recontextualizing a shared heritage, mingling old neo-mystic methodologies with post-techno pleasure principles. Vibrasound highlights this, illuminating his individual contribution to the Detroit-Berlin dub-techno shuttle, namely a churning elemental substratum, viewable as a “natural” counterpart to Chain Reaction’s “industrial” undertone. On Vibrasound this nature-machine hybrid feeds off spare hyper-repetitive key-stabs, low-slung chug-a-lug locomotion, and minute shifts in the churning organic undertow. Other trace elements: loopy gauzy efflatus of Voigtian Gas (minus the Wagnerian uber-tones) plus chillout-zoning chords, detached from deepest house. The continuous mix of Deepchord fragments, Illuminati Audio Science, credited to Modell jointly with one Kevin Hanton, provides another setting, recalling in conception Scion’s arranging and processing of Basic Channel tracks. But where Scion’s recontextualizations seemed to re-vivify the original BC material, Hanton struggles to animate his re-Modelling. His contribution seems rather to limit the extent of listener entry to the sonic edifice and inertly DJ-ify the proceedings. It all becomes somehow much more of a surface plaything. Where within Vibrasound’s recursive material there is sufficient micro-variation, and the layering allows the ear to dredge among evanescent echo-returns and reverberative sediment for aural pleasure treasure, Illuminati rests in not so splendid stasis on its reiterative laurels, and, with the deeper-diving option removed, the “trip” has fewer traveler options. All chord and no depth. After these almost smooth bpm-fuelled throbscapes, Sonic Alter (Deepchord remix) by Modell and Michael Mantra, is an entirely different animal. Something of a primordial monster from the deep, re-working a cult ambient “classic” (Silent, 1994), it foregrounds Modell’s earlier psycho-acoustic-activism. Mantra/Modell are old collaborators, advocates of a creed of sound as catalyst to changing states of consciousness. The four 14-minute tracks re-Modell the same basic material: constant four-on-the-floor pulse, metallic bass production, high-pitched singing-bowl overtones, ominous Tibetan-mantra voice-drones. Mantra/Modell’s “binaural processing” technique has various sonic manifestations of air and earth co-occurring at ground and sub-levels; water-masses, too, sluicing around, writhing with ululating cetaceans and unidentifiable flotsam. Ritual ambient married to environmentalist audio with a dubby headnod undercurrent, it’s an otherworldly brew; to believers it will be invocatory, state-altering, even shamanic. To the skeptics who can get past the faint peal of “new age” alarm bells, Sonic Alter offers a quasi-narcotic headtrip. Devilishly depth-charged however it takes you. Yet another Modell comes in the shape of Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach. The quasi-academic title is indicative of its rather more studied and formalized orientation, as compared with the other Deepchord material. Conceived for a conceptual art installation and for low-level ambient playback, it’s 80 minutes of a simple pulsing lightly-echoed phased keyboard figure serially engulfed by massive matter-motions; vast water-breakings, tectonic plate-shiftings, abyssal air surges, heavy machinery shifting gears, all massified by a brobdingnagian reverb unit. A sort of industrial-environmental collage, and very obviously informed by the binaural processing methodology, but those 80 minutes are a long haul indeed, and suited more to in-and-out dipping (a use which is entirely congruent with its conceptualization). Engaging Michigan museum-goer mode, you might transform your domestic leisure setting into a living art installation with Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach. We move on now to another ambient-makeover artist. Lurking under the Seele moniker is none other than Amplexus veteran Amir Baghiri, apparently assisted by Stefano Gentile, whose Berlin release is a series of sonic snapshots of various quarters of that city (identifiable from track-titles). Baghiri, a long-time German resident of Iranian extraction, is perhaps most familiar from his sneaky clonings of mid-period Steve Roach tribal-ambient spacesounds, while Gentile fulfills a shadowy role here. This is certainly a different beast from Baghiri’s previous oeuvre, though, for here we get a hypnotic city-scaping soundtrip, mixing sounds of trance-technoid buzz with ambient lushness and the odd belch of an industrial furnace, some ethnoid chatter and errant trip-hop digressions. The reductionist mutters, “yet another old ambient guy coming back with a post-techno implant; this may well be his Berlin but it’s essentially tired Amplexus fodder with a post-trance-techno facelift.” Fortunately, the reductionist is drowned out by the audiophile, who simply says “mmm... nnniiiice.” Seamus is the oddly mundane moniker for another Baghiri project, this one with a somewhat perplexing proselytizing mission to “carry us to the mystical side of our industrial world” (Baghiri blurb). Forever requires some preliminary sticky “mystical” moments to be negotiated, occasioned by noxious “come-with-me-to-an-inner-galaxy” drivel piped through the vocal conduit of guest artist Christian Fuess. Assuming recovery, you’ll enjoy some fairly serene but not supine atmospheres in which sections of Deepchord-esque neo-housey synco-stabs mix with ambient washes and the odd trancey fractal groove or tribal percussive moment (fun, too, to spot traces of Baghiri’s Virtual Roach moments, e.g., on “31 August, 1987”). Overall, a good balance is sustained between dynamic elements and morphing atmospheres, or, as they say in Baghiriland, “between emotional energies and spiritual experiences.” Truth be told, though, Baghiri’s music feels second-hand (at least), and there’s nothing here to get your mystical juices over-flowing. “Refined” and “elegant” electronic music, perhaps, with “discreet rhythms” and “pleasant movements” (from my Baghirese phrasebook), sure, but promises of heady fragrance are either over-sanitized or undermined by wafts coming off the pseudo-cosmic bilge. A bit of a mystic pizza. A welcome antidote to Seamus’s subliminally spiritual fiddling comes in the form of Magical Tone Tricks, and a sound that smacks if not of a grubby godless universe, then at least one with a vaguely unvirtuous sprawling tendency. Belgian duo Ontayso here offer four 10-minute-plus tracks to make you feel kind of dirty but clean—nicely narcotized, not totally trashed. They mine an atmospheric vein close to that already well dug by early Basic Channel (ja, immer wieder) and the Chain Reaction of Vladislav Delay and Fluxion, also recalling the hallucinogenic reiterations of Pub’s sadly under-exposed single. There’s still musical gold in them there hills—a haul of drifting minor-chord synth-smears, spectral sustains, dubbed-out metallic stabs, visited by insistent background pulses. The eponymous tone tricks refer presumably to the deployment of intense stereo-panning techniques that will set heads spinning, allied to field recordings and a mix/production that is evidently inspired by Modell/Deepchord, but less jacking and more droning. A hazed daze of slow decays and long delays to answer the prayers of CR casualties cold-turkeying from the ravages of “heroin house” withdrawal, Ontayso brings you methodone pulsedrone. By the grace of Silentes, Alio Die’s Suspended Feathers returns, sounding almost like a transmission from another planet or a distant civilization rather than dusted off from the Amplexus vaults, 1996 vintage. This reissue is certainly well-merited for it still resonates as a work of exquisite neo-ritual ambience, which the customary binary epithets of “light” and “dark” fail to do justice to. Stefano Musso’s sound artefacts would require for their full textualized mediation (as yet uncoined) synaesthetic equivalents to “lost,” “abandoned,” “occult.” Pieces such as “Descending Past” are draped in an arcane fog of processing that nevertheless somehow allows clear sonic resolution to veiled sounds that seem to hang and float wispily. Dronemeister Musso here performs an effortless masterclass, manipulating organic musical material and environmental samples into suggestive solemnities and ceremonials, a minimal blending of almost medieval gothic tone-poetry (the stringed interplay on “Wings of the Firefall”) and more contemporary isolationist dronescaping (the frozen expanses of “Time in Absence”). Old skin for new ceremonies. Indicative of the extensive sound-scope covered by Silentes is the stylistic gulf between old-timer Alio Die and newcomer Katzo. Unfortunately that gulf is also a qualitative one, as Katsuya Urushizaki’s compositions on Disposition pass by registering little more than a ho-hum and a nod of recognition at some sub-low bass sounds and slick but flavorless minimal techno fripperies. Apparently Urushizaki started his music career performing as a VJ/DJ before studying sound engineering and music programming. It must be said that his DJ roots are all too evident throughout the generic anodyne contours of his music. At best, Disposition is a merely competent excursion into minimal tech-house—overpolite work-outs with a vague sub-dub influence, but, alas, no substantial evidence of Urushizaki’s presence is emitted. “A 70-minute flux of dynamic/driving programmed rhythmic sequences, bass lines, and pulsing grooves...meshed into each other, then infused with microsounds,” the accompanying press release would have it, which agent-less sentence bears testimony to the evident author-death that could be this recording’s subtext. Swiftly on to the headier wafts of Opium, nom d’artiste of Matteo Zini, Milanese recruit to the lengthening line of Italian post-goth post-industrial ambienteers, heir to the legacy of Alio Die (with whom he has musically communed under the Sola Translatio banner) and less ascetic peer of the current Don of deepspace-droners, Oöphoi. His Sympathetic Flying Objects lands with a bold strident blur of sound that is neither noise nor melody, but contains elements of both. “Domus” opens like a village orchestra tuning up awash with irruptive field recording detritus and tonal squalls, as if from the braying of atavistic rituals. As with Opium’s musico-spiritual godfather, Alio Die (credited with contributing some plucks of aforementioned archaic stringed things), past, present and future intermingle headily. The track “afirespoken” achieves the considerable feat of sounding like an organic living, breathing, lightly smouldering, entity. There are drones, but not the type dredged from the deepest bottom-end level, many being mid or upper range string-generated sustains or wind-like efflatus. By comparison with his soulmates, Opium is expansive and maximal. Where they tend to the minimal, making small things resonate into big spaces, Zini is copious in his resources, even to the extent of over-egging the pudding or, certainly at one point, of garnishing his confection with an incongruent quasi-techno-boogie rhythm after an hour of largely beatless drift-surge. That aberration aside, Opium artfully designs a teeming sonic edifice with textures from the palette of his peers hitched to templates more suggestive of sequencer-infused soundflow, the latter betraying a sound education spent partly in the cloisters of the 70/80s Berlin school. Then it’s Michael Mantra redux, this time without his Rod (Modell) and staff to comfort him. And Boolean Languages does, frankly, sound more than a touch depleted, chiefly texturally. A vain quest awaits those seeking a spark that might ignite this bunch of (presumably) Zen-inspired synth-meanderings from 1995-1997, unearthed and remastered. There is no apparent wisdom-of-hindsight intervention evident in the almost willfully un-ambient non-production, which leaves some rather rudimentary-sounding synth patches to wander and waver unassisted; its lone drones sound all too vulnerable without a nice voluminous reverb/delay overcoat to tuck around them. Four tracks, then, minimally distinguished one from another, and all haunted by a peculiarly unappealing field recording-type sample between a voice/throat-clearing and someone shoveling snow, treated with some form of backwards-slapback echo. It would perhaps be “creepy” if it weren’t downright irritating. In truth, Mantra’s proto-soundscapes struggle to achieve transcendence from their prosaic reality, as noted by the sound of someone fiddling and wibbling about artlessly on the white notes of a (not especially resonant) 15-year old keyboard. The patented M/M underlay of environmental peripherals is a thin undercoat, which fails to be properly binaural. What we’re dealing with here is a failure to resonate. Timbre and ambience are as forgotten gods, and there is no suspense in these preset fodder tones. The liner notes attempt some text-music synergy, willing the reader-listener find meaning and mystery in “these sonic waves breaking at the beaches before your ears, transducing electrical pulses surfing the inner tide of peptides undulating from distant lands within.” Um, okay then. That would perhaps explain it. But seriously, this is a rather earnest attempt at getting deep and mystical that dithers in the shallows, all transparent. Another solo Mantra release from a similar period is dusted off from mid-to-late 90s obscurity by Silentes. A/B gives off two long tracks of sooty drone-based atmospheres, draped in a low-lying headache fug, maneuvering a nocturnal hum inhabited by some grainy Eraserheadian background throb. Neither “A” nor “B”’—the two long format tracks making up its 60+ minutes—make any pretence at conventional musical gestures beyond the monotone. And truth be told, A/B is all the better for it, since Mantra’s forte is clearly not (as illustrated by Boolean Languages) melodic/harmonic. It is rather the creation of a certain barely inhabited space—setting-focused and atmosphere-heavy—into which the listener may be drawn. Layers of slowly cycling air-streams, electronic waves, natural ambient feedback, far-off rumbles, distant clattering masses in motion...it’s dark in there, but not gloomy. This is dronecore. A/B is, according to a Silentes-servicing scribe, “an excursion into dark ambience searching for substance and meaning in a world devoid of reason and compassion.” To which might be added that “meaning” here is ineffable, but substance is pervasive. Now it’s Modell’s turn to return, this time with one Chris Troy as sidekick, re-presenting a (dark) golden (ambient) oldie, originally released on Kim Cascone’s Silent Records, now under the aegis of a “Silentes 10 Year Anniversary Editions.” A recording that has not notably dated (recorded two years prior to his Sonic Continuum for Hypnos), V1.0-1.9 clearly never received due recognition at the time. Something of the sound-aesthetic of Waveform Transmission (the project moniker) can be grasped by looking at the liner notes, which credit Modell and Troy with, as well as an array of significantly ID-ed digital (Fairlight) and analog (Korg MS10, MS20 and MS50) hardware, and vintage FX-processors (“Publison Infernal Machine 90”), such exotica as “atmospheric phenomenon,” “recordings of the dead,” and “field recordings (made during periods of highly-charged paranormal activity)”. So, V1.0-1.9 goes far out beyond the drone zone into outer limits territory. Recorded live in the basement of WSGR-FM in Michigan, it is in fact, like most of Modell’s work from the 90s, an inquiry into the impact of sound on the human psyche, with faint reminders of Clock DVA and their 80s pursuit of exploring the “psychophysicists.” These pieces of sound-design take on a certain strange euphony and waking dream-like resonance the more one listens. In short, an object lesson in post-industrial environmental ambient experimentation by an expert sound researcher. Prolific Japanese artist, Akifumi Nakajima, aka cult experimentalist Aube, steps up to the plate next with three recordings comprised of re-workings of material sourced from others. For those uninitiated in the art of noise, Nakajima is regarded by some as one of the most important “noise musicians,” though apparently our man prefers the term “design” to “music” in referring to his oeuvre. Beginning the Aube project back in the mists of 1991, he would take simple, usually organic, source sounds, like the gurgling of water and pulmonary sounds, or odd aspects of technology, like the hum of lava lamps and voltage-controlled oscillators, and heavily process them into massified sonic sculptures. The essential element of early Aube projects was that each record was composed with only a single material source, electronically manipulated and processed. Undeniably influenced by his training and subsequent work as an industrial designer, there seems more than an element of musique concrète in his recordings. In fact, with this kind of work, what emerges seems more in keeping with classic process-based experimentalism (well documented in Nyman’s 1974 book Experimental Music). That is to say, its raison d’etre is more to do with the aleatory and the felicitous (or otherwise) outcomes of indeterminacy than with the art of purposive manipulation, the latter something Aube’s “designer” status might be seen to imply. In this respect it is a design that enfolds within it an element of the undesigned—of the non-planned, the happy accident. To the specifics of the recordings for Silentes, Aube Reworks Stefano Gentile is a work of obliterative treatment; that is, it involves a reprocessing and recomposing of decomposed musical material, here originating from Silentes capo Gentile, though provenance is rendered largely irrelevant, such is the transformational stretch. It makes little sense to dissect these works into individual tracks in order to comply with review conventions. So, suffice to say that the recording contains six pieces on which an apparent stasis dominates, though this is at intervals stretched out and wrenched into pulsing motion. In terms of drama, it is as if glacial tensions eventually shift to electronically-mediated conflicts, which may eventually find resolution of sorts. Or not. The Aube armory deploys quasi-incantatory reiterative sequences and sundry loop-strata in slow-mo collision, to create isolationist atmospheres through which move gradual accretions of transformative sonic masses. And if that sounds somewhat “heavy,” then it is entirely authentic to the listening experience. This recording sits side-by-side, both logically and chronologically, with Aube Reworks Maurizio Bianchi Vol. 1, the first volume of two in which Aube sources material by notorious power electronics and industrial-noise artist M.B., the man who likes to up his mystique ante by referring to himself by his initials. (Mysterious Bloke?) Here Bianchi’s M.I. Nheem Alysm (see later) is re-modelled, its titles spun backwards as if to verbally represent the decomposition and recomposition of elements. Aube preserves the experimental spirit of the music, but renders it somewhat less extreme, not to mention completely otherized, deploying a similar palette and architectures to those used on Gentile’s material. A sequel, Aube Reworks Maurizio Bianchi Vol. 2, reworks Bianchi’s recent The Testamentary Corridor (see later), ostensibly a series of reflections on Polish concentration camps, at least if titlings such as “Chelmno Anguish” and “Birkenau Suffering” are to be taken at face value. Aube again uses his elaborative techniques, here fundamentally based on hypnotic cycling figures and patterns, with other metamorphosing sonic layers enfolded into tectonic shifting evolutions. The ethos of Aube is at first glance in opposition to the precepts of ambient, but only to a popular conception of ambient as something for relaxation and “comfort.” There are on these recordings passages in which the emissions from his somewhat alien satellite become synched with the in-house minimal-dark-ambient-environmental wavelength of Silentes. It has been observed elsewhere that Aube albums manifest, above all, a relentless abstraction. Many of the works would no doubt once have been conceptualized as biographies of objects from an unusual vantage point, and hence the product of a strange union between the documentary and the surrealist. But these more recent Silentes releases may be seen as less conceptual along these lines, for the sources are now not found in organic or technological objects but in the output of others, itself generated from unidentified sources. Ultimately, then, it matters not where these noises came from, since they all fuse into a single idea: audio-transformation. Now there’s a certain aspect of the cult, in the true sense of that word, about artists such as Aube, and this is shared with Maurizio Bianchi, whom we move on to now. There’s a certain hermetic quality that renders their sound art something forbidding, even repellent, to those who are not adept. However, the process by which one might gain admission to the inner sanctum of understanding is not immediately apparent to this listener, unless it is through repeated exposure, and a form of gradual acculturation. An Aube enthusiast once wrote: “School children should learn about Aube in the same chapters that cover Duchamp and Cage and Christo.” Without wishing to be didactic, understanding this is perhaps the key to understanding Aube, but not to liking these recordings, a more challenging exercise, itself dependent on the infinite subjectivities of the nature of “liking” among listeners. Now, Silentes has its share of oddballs and outsider types, but of all of them it’s Maurizio Bianchi who would have to be the winner of the Most Difficult Customer prize, indeed possibly qualifying for the coveted Tortured Artist gong. Having been around since the Ark (Raiders of…) assailing us sonically, initially with industrial strength eardrum-buzz, and after a long hiatus of nigh on 15 years spanning the mid-80s through most of the 90s, M.B. has more recently been mining an area which has occasionally yielded something more reflective and assimilable. Bianchi returned initially with a sound that was much less hysterical, even almost ambient, before starting to hark back more to his original style of the 80s. The “comeback” works, possibly influenced by new age music, were much more relaxed than earlier sonic attack experiments, but it seems, from last year’s Niddah Emmhna at least, that he has gradually returned to his erstwhile favored stomping ground of atonal industrial music. Bianchi's self-devised methods of composition, called de-composition, essentially a blend of the plunderphonic and the reductive, involve a strategic rearrangement of deliberately obscured sound sources, especially other people’s, using a procedure of disfiguration (re-recording original source until it is a trace), effects, and loops. This strident noise-oriented collage is available on its own or as part of a limited (to 300) edition 4-CD box set rejoicing under (or lumbered with) the infelicitous (and questionably grammatical) title of Together's Symphony. It assembles Bianchi’s solo work and his collaboration with Rome's self-styled “ambient-electronic-ethnic-experimental musician,” Giuseppe Verticchio, aka Nimh, bringing together (ostensibly) two joint ventures and one solo offering from each. This somewhat rich confection includes: Bianchi’s Niddah Emmhna, Nimh’s Subterranean Thoughts, Nimh + M.B.’s Secluded Truths, and M.B. + Nimh’s Together's Symphony. These range from the dark-hued industrial effusions of Together's Symphony to the more lyrical introspective atmospheres of Secluded Truths, back again to the noisier extremes of Niddah Emmhna, and then to the tenebrous rituals of Subterranean Thoughts. To return to Niddah Emmhna, two prolonged symphonies apparently relating to “globular activity” sprawl across its diameter, the first juxtaposing the aural poison of metallic ambiance with mesmerizing, constantly overlapping eruptions of “erythrocyte frequencies” (to quote Bianchi), the second a journey through a recurring motif of morphed “neurologic piano” and feedback. Some of the language “officially’ accompanying the release is consciously reused here (in keeping with the reworking concept) to give a flavor of what these recordings “are about,” so to speak. Without this commentary, you would have nothing but a work of unnerving sound-sculpturing, chilly soundscapes of stratified processed textures redolent of such as Maeror Tri or Organum. Indeed, were its religious (based upon Leviticus 15, verses 9-33) origins not pre-trumpeted, one would have designated this the kind of work that might give occasional Satanists the perfect soundtrack for unholy rituals. Nimh’s Subterranean Thoughts, on the other hand, displays a quite rampant eclecticism, shifting from the field recording-oriented “distressed”-sample ambient of “Recovered Memories” to the quasi-Lustmordian unquiet of “Back to Laudomia,” to the respirations and rituals of “Perpetual Cycles.” This is a synth-based ambient, somber rather than dark or gloomy, but do not look to be soothed. Synths, keyboards, ethnic samples, and field recordings are deployed, but to a less beguiling effect than kindred spirits such as Opium. This collection certainly gives voice to a polytextural palette; however, Nimh seems to have a diverse yet somewhat dissipated audio-agenda that would require more concentrated focus on fewer elements. The collaborative venture with Bianchi, Secluded Truths, is similarly strangely suspended. It exists in a peculiar half-life zone of loop-decay, barely populated by Bianchi’s pianoid minimalism and Nimh's lost ghost-voices. A difficult disc to get through happily, it is apparently directed towards the search for spiritual truth—on this evidence a failed quest: all is largely shadows and fog to these skeptic ears. The other joint release, Together's Symphony, is deceptive in its collaborative aspect, consisting as it does of tracks composed separately by each artist. It is in fact a surprisingly tranquil affair, with a certain warmth and unexpected lyricism, but again partial engagement fails to take hold throughout its considerable course. Back to individual releases, Bianchi’s more recent M.I. Nheem Alysm offers two long tracks of treated piano études. Essentially an extended indulgence in finger-doodling quasi-scales, it becomes enervating after several minutes of neurotic meandering. The middle piece allows a brief respite of delicate overtones, before the pianoid peregrinations recommence, the nearest reference point being a Charlemagne Palestine piece (“The Lower Depths”), rigid and overweaning in its minimalist bloody-mindedness. Attending the end of this trawl through the last nearly two years of the Silentes catalog is Bianchi’s The Testamentary Corridor. Here Bianchi performs his customary audio deep-diving, decomposing sound into pink and white noise-sprays of elemental particles, interspersed with quiet bits (the last written intentionally prosaically in protest at accompanying textual excess of Bianchi biochemico-babble press release blurbs.) Quite a ride then, this Silentes trip, looking out from these somewhat remote dark and remote extremities back to embarcation point, to what now seems the relative clemency of Deepchord. The label’s keynote seems to be transformations. This can be dually spun to read transformations of audio material and the transformative power of audio in terms of its effects on the listener. Hopefully, at some point you will be appropriately transformed through their agency. Enjoy the Silentes. ALAN LOCKETT • www.silentes.net |
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