I know, it’s been almost seven months that this album has been released, but I will write down my thoughts anyway, though I will keep it short.
Between Planes got released approximately eight months after Liminal Places (review-link: see below) and continues the concept of liminal spaces and places, referring to the frightening equilibrium in between the material world and the psyche. Or, as said by the label: the sense of spatiotemporal alienation characteristic of its sonic world. Physical areas might invoke anxiety, despair or claustrophobia, just because the subconscious says so. Caused by ‘sounds’, ‘our brain wanders in search of coordinates and footholds [], whose monotonous and desolate frequencies prevent us from establishing a psycho-spatial anchoring.
This successor of Liminal Places consists of three ‘songs’, with a total running time of more than three hours. Each piece clocks for one hour and a few minutes. It comes with artwork comparable to the former album; in this case being a black-and-white picture of some desolated place (a rusty car, an abandoned building, electricity pillars, and a barren environment). And believe me if I say that the visual artistry totally fits both the concept as well as the aural side of Between Planes. Design: RhaD. Mastering: Raffaele Pezzella, curator of this label (aka Sonologyst).
The triptych offers plentiform long-stretched waves of sound, individually monotonous at first impression, yet actually quite luxurious in nature. A multifold amalgam of soundscapes continuously evolves, expands and transmorphs. Deeply rumbling drones, spatial frequencies, ethereal orbits-of-noise and pulsating loops create a universe where inner desolation and immeasurable magnitude mingle together. Manifold keyboard manipulation and the intensity of droning ambience result in a complex and discordant experience, in a confusing and disorienting play-of-mind, where ideas, perception, senses and reality are neither false or true; the seemingly conscious reality is manipulated, deceived by the illusoriness of the subconsciousness.
Despite (or better: because of) the extremely protracted length of each of the three compositions, there is always something to experience, for the sonic side permanently shifts through gradations of intensity and posture. Generally seen, elements from Industrial, Dark Ambient, Drone, Electroacoustics and Cinematic Soundscape – and even a certain Badalamenti-oriented subtlety – are (at first listen) drawn into a somewhat minimalistic yet secretly lush and decadent sonic macrocosm, where nothing is what it seems. Endorsing endurance by the listener, Between Planes keeps on surprising, each time (meaning: by each listen) manifesting details and elements that had not been unveiled before. Mechanical structures and organic textures seem to collide and to coalesce; reverberating and escalating, then again waning, obfuscating the light and enlightening emptiness, immaterializing the physical world and displaying the soul.
Even-though the three auditory creations on Between Places are so extended in duration, all three of them do differ from each-other, yet still they do conserve, even vindicate, a requisite coherency. Flooded Village is a spacious soundtrack with hypnotic dronework, atmospheric set-ups, and chimerical tone-fibers, offering several gloomy and eerie intermezzi, excerpts of mechanoid industrialization, and oppressive sound-effects. A Space Between Planes (Building 212) comes with quite some feedback and the addition of noisy fragmentations, as well as a hint of impending doom and forlorn void, slowly yet steadfastly descending into a bottomless pit of archaic and isolationist discomfort. There’s little more experimentation once in a while within this specific ‘song’. The last piece, finally, The Barbed Town, convoys the listener into the deepest pit of one’s Inner Eye, balancing in between fragments of moony ambience and silent distances.
Compared to Liminal Places, this sophomore album continues the vein of that former one, yet somehow it delves deeper into the subconscious presence. From aural point, these three new creations are more profound and abstruse, resulting in a three-hours-plus adventure that will appeal to the unprejudiced yet (at least secretly, haha) adventurous ones amongst us…
https://zerok.bandcamp.com/album/between-planes
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/vyormouth