[short but necessary]
Always a pleasure listening to a new recording by the sympathetic English sir P.B., here active as D¥$FUNCTion. Under the Gold-moniker, he creates Music (yeah, whatever) ‘by using whatever he can get his hands on both legally and illegally’. That surely counts for Embers too, a (new) four-track recording that clocks about thirty-three minutes. Once again, it gets released via Polish top-label Gates Of Hypnos. And that artwork, before focusing on the aural content, well, how sweetly fitting it is, is it not?!
Embers stands for – what else did you think – an experimental yet extremely obscure, oppressive and grim form of Harsh Noise with a certain Ambient-laden atmosphere. Let’s call it HANWE, Harsh Ambient Noise Wall Experimentalism or so. It starts as from the first, eh, ‘song’ (yes, once again I have to admit: what’s in a name), called Lily: doomed drones, shrieking mechanics, post-electronic devastation and static discordance. …although, ‘static’ isn’t exactly the most appropriate description, for this opening track stands miles away from any form of undeviating immobility.
Breaker, then again, dwells into more anti-stylistic regions, expressing intolerant power-electronica through skin-scraping and brain-squeezing sonic disturbance. This Harsh Noise / Power-Industrial Noise Wall does barely evolve, for it is the incarnation of ultra-sonic sound-rape in its most virginal nature; a painful experience for whomever gave birth to this miscreature, a blessing for its offspring.
The title track delves into the unlimited, unparalleled, unlimited spheres of purest HNW. Ten devastating minutes, violently marching forward, sweetly caressing one’s mutilated eardrums; Embers is an intoxicating piece of in-depth intrigue, inimitable awe and even unprecedented contemplation, yet the whole of the time it exhales a semi-sensual excitement.
This four-tracker ends with Bird Box, which clocks just five minutes. Field-recordings of singing birds and additional sounds (composed legally and illegally, evidently) are injected into a weird, somewhat mesmerizing soundwave; the latter based on different subtle layers of digital gloom. I mean, at the background, some haunting soundscapes float on an by, like volatile clouds of scents, mysterious yet permanently present. The combination with the samples works bewitching and seductive.
With Embers, Gold succeed to bring four strongly cohesive yet, at the very same time, different pieces of Noise-laden grandeur. Mister D¥$FUNCTion is able to wander through different spheres of industrialized sound-sculpting, and it works.
https://gatesofhypnos.bandcamp.com/album/embers
https://goldnoise.bandcamp.com/album/embers
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold-0
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold-sado-rituals