This time, I won’t spend my time in introducing this UK-based act; several of Sir (bleak)’s releases have been reviewed for this webzine before, so in case of interest, I would kindly ask you, dear reader, to check them out. When it comes to this specific project spawn from Peter B.’s disturbed mind, and for your convenience (or the lazy ones amongst us), I did add some links beneath…
Carrion might be the most productive outlet of this guy, whom you might know as well from projects like Gold, (bleak), Aspects & Fragments, Star Damage etc. This new recording is a one-tracker that lasts for exactly half an hour. And before going over onto the aural content, first a word about the visuals. Well, I know that it isn’t but a purely personal – and therefor subjective – given, yet I adore that cover! In fact, it is no more than a painting of some girl within a wintery landscape, in front of a frozen lake, with a log cabin, an old house, whatever, on the background, and a tree besides her, all covered in snow, nicely finished with a minimalist color-palette (not purely ‘black’n’white’, yet still lacking overwhelming color-harmonization)… It might be Elsa, musing, meditating, reflecting…
So, exactly thirty minutes of somehow monotonous noisy drones is what Isolation stands for. Yet it is so much more than just a repetitive, non-evolving piece of un-sound. Actually, despite the monotone basics, there is a lot to experience. At the one hand, you have the many subtle, almost secret (or is it :sacred) additions, i.e. fine-tuned samples and field-recordings, like crackling sounds, strange bleeping injections, or hints of wind and waves unsubtly caressing the rugged shores (I guess). At the other hand, this exceeds the ‘traditional’ HNW / ANW approach, for Isolation permanently evolves, interacts, explores, morphs, and transforms. It is amazing to notice the subtlety of these continuous contrasts and progressions, for as a whole, this pièce d’art sonore actually is built around a single one-directional soundwave.
Most of the time, things guileless and unforced do rumble, like a slow yet unstoppable avalanche that is softly yet unstoppably overwhelming a bleak (got it?) landscape. The combination of the additional sampled injections and the textures of desolation-expression Drone / Noise / Ambient works quite mesmeric; little soporific (yet without any reference to dullness or boredom!), seductive and in’toxic’ating too. There’s a permanent arousal going on, creating a somewhat masochistic urge, or need, or wish, that this self-defined reiteration will never come to an end.
Recommended!
https://carrionnoise.bandcamp.com/album/isolation
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/carrion-sado-rituals
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/carrion
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/carrion-0