David Reed is obsessed with the dark. Every synapse in his brain aims to realize a stygian monstrosity from the most basic electronic utterances. Into the Void successfully gathers those expressions into a crawling black chorus of sound, like a cantata sung for the terror infinite and empty space can inspire. A meditative bleakness is amassed over the course of Into the Void with only the most cosmic instruments. The imaginary sounds of a supernova, the electric pulse of magnetic fields, and the icy explosions of colliding asteroids all play a role in Reed's swirling orchestras. And his songs do sound as though they are played by a group of empyrean and sentient beings. Unlike other artists who claim the fertile grounds of noise as their birth place, Reed's work is sober and composed instead of desultory and manic. Explosions radiate and dance with an observable intelligence instead of crashing and decaying senselessly and Reed never allows his bellowing cries to spill over into a continuous and bland stream of white noise.
That dedication to clarity ranks as one of this album's greatest strengths. Beyond being tightly controlled, every detail of Reed's heavenly pandemonium resounds as clearly as a bell no matter how busy it gets. No song depends on microscopic activity, but each breath of solar wind washes through the mix unhindered by sloppy production or over-zealous volume. This allows Reed to use the existing small details in each song to his advantage. On "Gravitational Pull" the presence of a monotonous synthesizer melody acts as a strong contrast to an ever-changing parade of radio noise; the two constantly pull at each other and manifest a tension that would not be possible if either were given over to excess. The absence of familiar musical conventions is made all the more powerful by the inclusion of distinct rhythms and melodic announcements. Both "Mariners" and "Dark Matter" depend on these recognizable features; without them both songs would sound all too static. Yet, if those features were anything more than occasional flourishes both songs would lose their ambiguous terror. Reed constantly plays a game of balance on each track, hushing any surfeit of sound in favor of a well-planned deficit.
Perhaps excess is the attractive and distinguishing feature for many extant experimental outfits, but I'm glad to hear Reed utilizing the power of subtlety and understatement. The spaces he leaves in his music are deceptive, often hiding the most surprising and effective moments. The best portions of this album are accompanied by silence or an illusory sense of it created by spaces opened up in the music; Reed has a talent for creating such abyssal places and decorating them with a real sense of foreboding and uncertainty. His compositions are unique and entirely synthetic, but somehow organic and frighteningly unpredictable despite their well-formed structures.
Into the Void is available on Crucial Bliss.
No comments:
Post a Comment