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Darkness descends rapidly for this collaboration between Brazilian ambient/ industrial noiseniks Each Second and Japanese cyberpunk author Kenji Siratori. Like a journey to the engine room of the video game ‘Quake’, daylight is a distant memory, fear drips from the walls and evil doesn’t so much lurk as loiter in the shadows without ever really having the courage to show itself in all its hideous and rotting glory. But is it art? Well, yes it most definitely is. Anyone who’s ever visited a gallery of modern art will have heard its’ like no doubt playing as an accompaniment to a video installation featuring interspersed footage of a Hitler address, rush hour traffic on the Autobahn and a man repeatedly ascending and descending the same staircase, or something very much like that anyway.
Is it music? On the basis that music should at the very least evoke some form of basic emotion then yes it is - it does feature the loosest form of melody and arrangement after all. The ever-so aptly named ‘Dark Side’ and ‘Corpse City II’ both feature the same looped three note progression (a close relative of both the Glam Descend and the Devils Interval) but a couple of semi-tones apart. Laid on top of this is Kenji Siratori’s unsettling poetry, which if you don’t have a grasp of Japanese will sound even more unsettling because you won’t have a clue what he’s talking about, which will be something like occupying a prison cell whose neighbouring inmate whispers continually in your direction and though you can’t make out exactly what he’s saying you know by the tone of his voice that it involves a thinly veiled threat of being duffed up by Mr. Big who’s in with the Warders. When stripped of anything resembling musical accompaniment however, as with ‘Anti-Vital’, Siratori’s voice threatens far worse than this.
There is some light relief of sorts in the form of the ambient waves that sweep through ‘Transfiguration’, but be warned, it is but a brief respite. Throughout this tumultuous aural aversion therapy session your senses will be assaulted variously by a continuously whining kettle, the march of a billion giant ants, and the sound of a bored labourer hammering on some scaffold three blocks away. A highly evocative piece of work then: just remember to keep a copy of Fifth Dimensions greatest hits close at hand.
RICHARD STOKOE
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