Wednesday 18 July 2012

Redness & Perplexity - Celer (Somehow Recordings) and Hei/Sou - Celer & Machinefabriek (Machinefabriek)



1 Voluminous Files of Multi-colored Lines / AM Arrest and Conclusion


2 Remaining Impassive, the Other Replied / Yellow-lit Tiers of Drawback Methodology // Flooded Rooms of Machinery // Moccasin


3 Neutral Tremors of Reclusive Intensity / 幡ヶ谷駅 // Looming Face /// Hissing Brilliance //// Buzzing Heartbeat


4 Sharp Sequel   5 A Less-abrupt, Multi-colored (but faded) Ending.........titles suggestive of something - but what? Elusive... literary.........

Is this album meditative? Zen-like?


What?


(Ambient music? I don't like the term. Outside my normal preference for beatless noir music professing to depict scenes of dread & horror, this music is welcome; a relief, a space in which to climb, away from the noise of the city here in Zone 1 & so much busy music on the hard drive - clutter - many would benefit from restraint...)

To paraphrase the title of one section, the sound of machines played by Will Long flood the room...

Less being more in this case, Long extracts maximum effect from the application of minimal tones with added (possibly field) recordings such as people in a room (a public space?) and a long spoken (Russian?) word intro. Yet all is not completely calm in the garden...there being interruptions, or rather, evolving passages a brittle sound. Reclusive intensity perfectly describes those parts. Intensity (being relative) plain and simple also bursts into life.

Much of this engages by stealth, and should be played frequently to pass any self-imposed barriers erected against refinement of this kind. And I'm talking to myself there. 


The final track is 46mins long. One sustained, subtly shifting (ceremonial) organ(nic) tone poem (or) hymn to minimalism. 



&

Hei/Sou.

Will Long with Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek)


A 7-inch. 


I last bought a 7-inch record in 1977.  But here, again, is mechanised wonder of the most pure (dare I say) variety. Where a small cathedral is duly erected with wave-upon-wave of sound moving from ear-to-ear  and through an almost child-like (in the best sense) melody. And  finally bolstered (very gently) by a bass tone, fading into the distance, as it began, to the sound of simulated cymbals.  


If there is a church to mécanique musique Will Long must be it's organist and with fellow orator Zuydervelt adding his voice it makes for a fascinating, beguiling sermon. Here, brimstone & fire rhetoric is replaced by an insistent whisper in the form of understated rhythm coaxing us to believe.



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