Posts Tagged ‘instrumental’

The Music Liberation Front Sweden – Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye, I’m Sorry For What We Have Become

Posted: 23 November 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Mortality Tables – 17th October 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Among their ever-expanding catalogue, Mortality Tables have put out a number of releases which are essentially singles or EPs, with this being one of them: with a running time of just over eleven and a half minutes, this single longform composition is only marginally longer than its title, but its creator, Michael Evill, has condensed a considerable amount of material and experience into this space.

As he writes, ‘I have created a movement which includes the last breaths of my beloved dog Watson. It also includes the last time I recorded with my most talented and wonderful best friend Gustaf in 2001, which I have slowed down so I (and you) can spend more time with him. There are the sounds of new stars being born – my own interpretation and ones ripped off from NASA through this modern internet connection we all have. Surely we own the stars still?

‘We have Aztecs having fun with drums. These were recorded live in Mexico, sadly not from the 14th century before we invaded. We have the hourglass from our kitchen, which Mat inspired me to sample. This was the first idea of this piece and everything else fell in to place very quickly as it’s been swimming in the back of my mind for a while.’

Clearly, some of these elements have deep emotional significance for Michael, but this isn’t conveyed – at least not overtly or explicitly – in the work itself. It’s a collage-type sonic stew, where all of the myriad elements bubble and roil together to form a dense soup, in which none of the flavours are distinct, but in combination, what he serves up is unique, and provided much to chew on. That this protracted food-orientated metaphor may not be entirely coherent is apposite, but should by no means be considered a criticism.

As Evill goes on to write, ‘this was the beginning, and I didn’t spend much time thinking about it and just coalesced those ideas.’ Sometimes, when seeking to articulate life experience, it doesn’t serve to overthink it. Life rarely happens that way: life is what happens when you’re busy thinking and planning. And just as our experiences aren’t strictly linear, neither are our thoughts and recollections. Indeed, our thoughts and memories trip over one another in an endless jumble of perpetual confusion, and the more life we live, the more time we spend accumulating experience – and absorbing books, films, TV, online media, overheard conversations and dreams, the more everything becomes intertwined, overlayed, building to a constant mental babble.

William Burrroughs utilised the cut-up technique specifically to bring writing closer to real life, contending that ‘life is a cut-up… every time you walk down the street, your stream of consciousness is cut by random factors… take a walk down a city street… you have seen half a person cut in two by a car, bits and pieces of street signs and advertisements, reflections from shop windows – a montage of fragments.’

This encapsulates the artist’s quest: to create something which conveys the thoughts in one’s head, to recreate in some tangible form the intangible nebulous inner life, if only to help to make sense of it for oneself.

‘Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye’ is a woozy, disorientating churn of noise, which is, at times, dizzying, unsettling, nausea-inducing. But then again, at other times, it’s gentle, even melodic, reflective, contemplative. There are some passages where it’s all of these things all at once. It very much does feel like a scan of the artist’s memory banks, the human brain equivalent of skipping through the RAM files and pulling items seemingly at random. It does feel somewhat strange, even awkward, being granted access in such a way, but at the same time, it feels like ‘Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye’ is more than an insight into the mind of one individual, but an exploration of the human psyche.

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Ov Pain – Free Time

Posted: 22 November 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 / A Guide To Saints – 7th November 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Free time? What’s that? Who actually has free time anymore? Something seems to have gone awry. Every technological advance promises more leisure time: from the industrial revolution to the advent of AI, the promise has always been that increased productivity through automation would give us more free time. So where the fuck is it? I don’t know anyone who isn’t constantly chasing their tail, running just to stand still, who doesn’t feel like they’re losing the plot or on the brink of burnout simply because the demands of working and running a household is close to unmanageable, and making ends meet is a major challenge… and the stress suffered as a consequence. N

Ov Pain – the experimental duo consisting of Renee Barrance and Tim Player seemingly scraped and made time to record this album, a set of live improvisations (saving the time required to write and rehearse compositions), whereby, as Tim explains, ‘We recorded four different synthesizers – two apiece – straight into a computer pulled from a skip.’ This is how you do it when there’s no free time and no spare money. Although not explicitly detailed in Tim’s commentary, these factors are quite apparently central to the album’s creation, and by no means unique to Ov Pain. There’s a reason many acts peter out when the members reach a certain point in life: jobs and families mean that creative pursuits require some serious drive to maintain.

Tim adds, ‘One thing that is important to us is the immediacy and economy with which it was made and how that immediacy and economy becomes the thing itself.’

For all of its expansive soundscapes and layered, textural sensations, there is very much a sense of immediacy to Free Time. But, by the same token, for an album recorded quickly, it certain makes the most of time, in terms of space. There are long periods of time where little happens, where drones simply… drone on. The sounds slip and slide in and out, interweaving, meshing, separating, and transitioning organically, but not without phases of discord and dissonance.

The first track, ‘Fascia’ – with a monolithic running time of nearly eleven minutes – is a tormenting, tremoring, elongated organ drone, soon embellished with quavering layers of synth which warps and wavers, .it; s like watching a light which initially stands still but suddenly begins to zip around all over. It sits somewhere between ambient and extreme prog, with some intricate motifs cascading over that monotonous, eternal hum. Towards the end, the density and distortion begin to build, making for a climactic finale.

‘Slouching Toward Erewhon’ tosses in a neat literary allusion while bringing a sense of bewilderment and abstraction to proceedings, before ‘Comparative Advantage’ slowly pulses and trills, then crackles and buzzes, a thick surging swell of noise which is uneasy on the ear. And yet, the seconds of silence in the middle of the track are more uncomfortable… at least until the throbbing distortion bursts in atop stains of feedback and whirring static.

It may have been building for some time, but this is one of those evolving sets which after a time, you suddenly come to appreciate has expanded, and gone from a fairly easy drift to a heavy-duty drone assault.

Over the course of the album’s seven pieces, Ov Pain really do push the limits of their comparatively limited instrumentation. ‘Slander’ is a squalling, eardrum-damaging blast of gnarly treble that borders on extreme electronica, a straight-up assault on the ears and the mind. It hits all the harder because there is no let-up, and the frequencies are harsh and the sounds serrated. Around the mid-point, it goes darker, gritter, more abrasive, making for a punishing six minutes. Further layer of distortion and screaming noise enter the fray. It’s not quite Merzbow, but it’s by no means accessible. The final track, ‘Pusillanimous’ presents seven minutes of slow-pulsating ambience, and is altogether more tranquil to begin with, but before long, there are thick bursts of distortion and overdrive, and low rumbles heave and grind in ways which tug at the intestines. I feel my skin crawl at the tension.

Free Time is an album of surprises, and, more often than not of discomfort. It’s the sound of our times.

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Bite the Boxer – Venom Test

Posted: 3 November 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Bite the Boxer is unquestionably an unusual and intriguing name for a musical project: my mind immediately leaps to the infamous ‘bite fight’ between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield in 1997, where Tyson lost through disqualification after biting off a chunk of Holyfield’s ear in one of sport’s most shocking moments.

In combining an eclectic range of elements spanning industrial, alt-pop, trip-hop, and ambient lo-fi, there’s nothing about Matt Park’s music which indicates any connection to this moment in sporting history. The same is true of his objective to create music imbued with ‘he feeling of impending doom but with just a glimmer of hope’, which is inspired by ‘horror video games and dystopian, post-apocalyptic films’.

‘Venom Test’ is haunting – at first ambient, before bursting with an expansive, cinematic feel, then plunging into darker territory. Even without the aid of a beautifully-shot and remarkably stylish video, the rack leads the listener through an evocative sequence of sonic transitions. Although never harsh, the distant drums are weighty, powerful, and the overall experience feels like a juxtaposition of must and decay with rays of shining hope breaking through cloud. The listener feels as if they’re being pulled in opposite directions, the suspenseful end offering no conclusion, but instead, leaving a sense of emotional quandary, an uncertainty. ‘Venom Test’ creates a tension, and provides no closure or conclusion, only a sense of a door being left ajar. It’s a deftly woven piece, and one which feels very much like it belongs to a much larger project – which it does, being a taster (which doesn’t remotely have the flavour of bloodied ear, to the best of my knowledge) for the forthcoming album, Haunted Remains Pt.2. As a choice of single, it’s a good one, leaving us in suspense to hear it in the context it was intended.

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William Covert – Dream Vessel

Posted: 9 October 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Coup Sur Coup – 17th October 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Few drummers receive much recognition, unless they’re the backbone of bands who are household names (people know Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Dave Grohl, Mike Joyce, Lars Ulrich), or have otherwise featured prominently in a specific musical milieu (Martin Atkins and Paul Ferguson come to mind). Their contributions are overlooked and underappreciated, and in the main, there’s a tendency to only notice exceptional drummers, or poor ones. It’s not the job of a drummer to grab attention, but to hold everything together at the back. Consequently, you might be forgiven for being unfamiliar with William Covert, whose career is defined more than 15 years of drumming in math rock, post-rock, and post-hardcore bands (Space Blood, Droughts, and Rust Ring).

As the narrative goes, ‘Covert began experimenting with live-looped synths alongside acoustic and electronic drums. This experimentation birthed two full-length solo albums characterized by post-rock and krautrock-inspired synth loops and melodies, all performed solo with loop pedals and sequencers.’ Dream Vessel was born out of a desire to pursue a different approach and a different direction, and indeed, the first part of this latest offering was a collaborative, group effort, with Nate Schenck on bass and Jack McKevitt on guitar, while we learn that ‘the other half was performed entirely solo, diving deep into cinematic ambient soundscapes, dreamy Frippertronic-influenced guitars, modular synth, and free-jazz drumming filtered through a post-industrial lens.’ Nothing if not varied, then.

The album’s five tracks span thirty-eight minutes, and it’s very much an exploratory experience. ‘Brotherhood of Sleep’ eases the listener in gently, with a slow, strolling bass and reverby guitars. It’s an expansive and spacious instrumental work, rich in texture and atmosphere – a shade proggy, a little bit jazzy, unfurling at a sedate pace. ‘Trancers’ fades in, and offers similar vibes, but it’s both more spacious, and more groove-led. The guitars bend and echo that bit further, and as the track progresses, so the pace and urgency build, along with the density of the guitars, which warp and stretch more with every bar. It may not hit the extremity of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, but the guitars do sound as if they’re melting by the midpoint, before the track locks into a muscular, driving groove that’s a world away from where it began. There’s an appeal that’s not easy to pin down when it comes to compositions which begin in one place and end up entirely in another, while it’s not entirely clear how they’ve transported the listener from A to B. The experience isn’t completely unlike making an absent-minded walk somewhere, when you haven’t been paying attention, and arrive with minimal recollection of the journey- although the difference is that the walk is usually via a familiar route that requires little to no concentration or engagement, whereas a song that swerves and switches involves an element of brain-scrambling along the way.

‘Dream Void’ is a centrepiece in every way: The third track, right in the middle, it’s over nine minutes in duration and a towering monolith of abstract drone. It’s immense, cinematic, widescreen, gentle. Around the mid-point, the drums arrive, and they’re busy, but backed off in the mix, and we’re led down a path to a place where frenetic percussion contrasts with chords which hover and hum for an eternity. Slow-picked guitar brings further texture to the mellow but brooding post-rock soundscape of ‘C-Beams’, which pushes toward nine minutes, as the album ventures into evermore experimental territory. As present as the drums are, they don’t provide rhythm, but bursts of percussion, swells of cymbal and wild batteries of rolling, roiling whomps.

The more concise, feedback-strewn ‘Throttle’ marks a change in aspect, a roar of noise, a wail of feedback, and positively wild, before ‘Come True’ closes the set with some Kraftwerkian bubbling synth and undulating bass, paired with a rolling beat. It’s all nicely done. And this is true of the album as a whole.

Dream Vessel is gentle, overall, but not without edge, or variety, and certainly not without dynamic. Here, ‘interesting’ and ‘unusual’ are not dismissive shrugs with a hint of condescension: Dream Vessel brings together a host of ideas and traverses a succession of soundscapes , never staying still for a second.

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Ben Frost – Steelwound

Posted: 18 September 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 19th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

There are many labels putting interesting and unusual, innovative releases into the world. The majority of them are small, and supremely niche, but survive by virtue of knowing their audience – and I say audience rather than market, because while they obviously need to balance financially, often on the minutest of margins, they exist for the purpose of disseminating art rather than the production of profit. The underground operates on a very, very different model, and with very different objectives, from the mainstream.

One label which is consistent in its output is Lawrence English’s Room40. The interview I conducted with Lawrence some years ago has vanished from the Internet now, as happens when websites cease to operate and their owners stop paying for their hosting, but it will always stand as one of my favourites. This is relevant, because we touched on the subjects of William Burroughs, cut-ups, and sonic collage, and lo, English, in his appraisal of Steelwound, recounts how ‘In the early 00s, Ben had been working on cut-up electronics, spilling over with floating rhythms, humming string samples and piano splices. It was a sound realised in part through the subversion of fruity loops and also owes a debt to Ableton Live which arrived in late 2001. His works to that point, gently saturated and bristling with a fizzy distortion at times, hinted at another sound world which would become his focused in the summer of 2002 and into 2003.’

A further note on Frost’s process is also informative by way of a preface, and comes again courtesy of Lawrence, who writes, ‘Working with a Fender Twin, often with the reverb dialled in at maximum, he found a language of shimmer and saturation, of compression and collision, that set the stage for a prolonged interest in how sound performs and is perceived at volume. It also is the first time that many of the tonal and melodic inflections that have come to be recognised as his compositional language are on display.’

This is the twentieth anniversary edition of an album that likely very few people have even heard of, let alone heard, and the chances are, it will remain that way despite this reissue. That isn’t because it’s not good, but because it’s ultra-niche and on a small label. But, in those certain small circles, it will likely receive attention, and deservedly so.

As is often the case, any technical and theoretical background is lost in the listening. The album’s first piece, ‘Swarm’, is an ambient work which may well weave a certain tension, but its trickling drone reveals nothing of the aforementioned context. The same is true of the epic ‘I Lay My Ear to Furious Latin’, which in itself is anything but furious, an floats, drifts and wisps abstractly over the duration of nine minutes, before the mellifluous ten-and-a-half-minute ‘You, Me and the End of Everything’ stretches out into post-rock territory, and in doing so extends its emotional pull, also. It’s slow and ponderous, spacious, and expansive, and strains of feedback scrape and push at the delicate, soft-focus edges, before the first vocals of the album arrive, haunted, detached, and deeply moving in unexpected ways. Sometimes, the human voice affects us more profoundly when any words aren’t discernible. We hear the emotion poured into them, and we feed on what we take implicitly. Sound and enunciation, delivery, can convey emotion and meaning which is beyond words, and that is very much the case here.

The title track, emerging from the rumble of thunder and heavy rain amidst a blustery backdrop scrapes and drones, trills and whines, a representation of an industrial soundscape that veers between the graceful and the brutal, the harsh, as feedback assails the ears frequently – but there are points at which it dissipates, and submits to drifting mellowness, even then the feedback continues. ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’, taking its title from Hubert Selby Jr’s classic, if gritty, novel is soft but with harsher edges.

It’s hard to comment on the initial resonance or impact of Steelwound twenty years ago. There likely wasn’t much. But as the whistles and wails of the title track dissipate in a gentle breeze, it does grow dark. Not SO dark, but darker that it was. This is an album of texture and detail, moving, but also captivating, a spell of gripping stillness, a pause to reflect. As the scraping, sonorous trails of ‘And I watch You Breathe’, it’s worth stepping back, taking a moment, and breathing. Just… breathing.

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Osak:Oslo – Silt and Static

Posted: 1 September 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Vinter Records – 5th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

The post-rock boom feels like a long, long time ago now. Perhaps because it was: realistically, we’re talking about nearly twenty years since Explosions in The Sky and Her Name is Calla were super-hot topics. I discovered HNIC supporting iLiKETRAiNS on tour circa 2007, and Maybeshewill via their split 12” with Her Name is Calla, before seeing them playing with AndSoIWatchYouFromAfar… There are always chains and sequences, but the post-rock bubble burst in a tidal wave of oversaturation maybe around 2009. It all got a bit samey. But there was – and still is – always room for a band that take a genre template and take it somewhere else, offering something different, instead of a template-based rehash. Enter Osak:Oslo, who most certainly offer something different. Silt and Static is nuanced, but at the same time forceful.

There’s nothing like going all-out epic on an opening track, and that’s what precisely what Osak:Oslo do here, with the eight-minute forty ‘Biting In’, which begins with some enticing, chiming guitar that’s quintessential post-rock in every way, but then the rhythm section kicks in, and it drives along straight ahead, riding a solid motorik groove for a bit. After taking it down in the mid-section, they come back in, driving harder than before, a sprawling desert-rock soundscape expanding like a straight road headed to the horizon. Hell yes! You feel this. Exhilarating is the word.

They take things slower and bring more weight on ‘Days Adrift’, but still conjure rich layers of atmosphere, and bring things together with a chunky, chugging, bass-driven groove. In contrast, ‘Salt Stains’ is altogether more jangly, indie, at least to begin, and then, less than a minute in, a solid riff powers in, topped by soaring lead guitar work.

Over the course of the album’s nine expansive tracks, Osak:Oslo demonstrate a real knack for beefy riffery – nothing overloading, hugely overdriven, distorted or gritty, but just big, bold, solid and defined by a sense of forward trajectory, and what’s most remarkable is the way the band arrived at this work:

Recorded spontaneously, Silt and Static captures the band at their most stripped-down and unfiltered, balancing atmospheric fragility with crushing depth. With tape rolling and no roadmap, the album emerged naturally, giving shape to a sound that’s both deeply personal and bleak yet beautiful.

‘Bleak yet beautiful’ is a fair summary, but establishing, or unravelling, precisely what’s personal on an instrumental work is not easy, or sometimes even possible, although it is clear that certain elements, sounds, structures, transitions, which hit in a particular way are deeply evocative, often moving. But as a listener, those moments feel personal and are rooted in one’s own experience, one’s own individual response. I write this as someone who has sat with friends, playing songs saying, as I practically burst with enthusiasm, “Wait… there! That’s the key change!” or “That’s where the distortion comes in!” or “There! There!”, to be met with… mixed results. Is that moment which floors me the same one which the creators feel is the pivotal point in the song, the one which articulates, through the medium of sound alone, that deep-seated, complex emotion which has been tormenting your psyche for months, or even years? I suppose it doesn’t really matter. What matters – for artists and listener alike – is that connection, achieving that vital emotional resonance, where the music speaks.

‘Resonance in Ash’ slips into shoegazey territory, but also offers the most potent swell of noise that threatens the eardrums, bursting into a ragged explosion of noise, bordering on post-metal and racing to a blistering crescendo, and despite being one of the album’s shortest songs, ‘The Onward Strike’ feels like one of the most immense. Then again, there’s ‘Break and Sink’, which goes all-out to crush… It’s riffy, it’s heavy, and it lands hard. The bass… it grinds, alright.

The beauty – and creative success – of Silt and Static is that it succeeds on both levels. Because of the bold riffery – never succumbing to the post-rock cliché of the slow-build and epic crescendo, but instead forging these strong, cinematic, rock-orientated bursts of energy which are immersive, transportative, and reach far beyond genre confines. Silt and Static is an imaginative, inspired work, and the circumstances of its creation make it even more remarkable. It’s the work of a band operating with a rare level of cohesion, and it’s pretty special.

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Nicholas Langley – One Square Centimetre Of Light

Posted: 27 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Nicholas Langley outlines his latest offering with the explanation that “One Square Centimetre Of Light is a continuation of the ideas and techniques I used to compose Thinky Space and especially Cymru Cynhyrchiol. Recorded in spring and summer 2024, this album was an outlet for a lot of thoughts and emotions regarding the involuntary loss of time and memory.’

There are gaps in the narrative here – gaps which I don’t feel it’s necessarily appropriate to probe or plug, particularly when, in his extensive explanation of the album’s final, thirteen-minute piece, ‘Missing Day’ – of which he writes: “‘Missing Day’ can refer either to the mourning feeling of losing whole days to bad health, or to the actual calendar day of mourning, Missing Day, on February 20th. For this piece, as well as layers of tracks 3, 4 and 5, I returned to the generative music techniques I started in 2016. This time around I spent many days getting to grips with programming multiple pieces until I eventually programmed a piece which exactly conveyed my feelings of mourning and hope.”

Memory loss can be a source of panic, anxiety, and while it appears to be a focus, or inspiration of sorts for this album, it feels inappropriate to probe here. But listening to the soft, soporific ambience of One Square Centimetre Of Light, I find myself wondering – where will it go next?

It doesn’t really need to ‘go’ anywhere: the instrumental works which make this album are subtle, sublime. ‘Welsh Summits’ is a beautiful, resonant ambient exploration, while ‘The Weather on the Seafronts’ is magical, mystical, ambient, while ‘Old Age’ quivers and chimes abstractedly, with layers of resonance and depth.

And so we arrive at ‘Missing Day’: fully forty minuses of melodic instrumental exploration, serene, calm, expansive. It’s soft and as much as One Square Centimetre Of Light soothing, the vast sonic expanse of ‘Missing Day’ encapsulates the album’s conflicting and conflicted nature.

One Square Centimetre Of Light is overtly serene and beguiling, but hints at an undisclosed turmoil beneath the surface, a work which is a sonic balm, the result of a process to calm inner strife. As lights at the end of the tunnel go a mere on centimetre is barely there – but there it is. And it is hope. keep the focus on that.

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DuChamp – The Wild Joy

Posted: 20 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Torto Editions / Ramble Records / Atena Records – 25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

DuChamp (certainly not to be confused with the seminal avant-gardist Marcel Duchamp) is a Berlin-based artist, and for this release, is the product of ‘a journey of development, research, and refinement of a deeply personal voice’, their chosen selection of instruments is listed as ‘baritone guitar, voice, organ, synths, bouzuki, electronics, incredible stubbornness.’

The baritone guitar is not a common instrument, but oner which sounds quite unlike any other guitar in terms of its tonality. Its application here is in providing the core to elongated sonorous drones on the five compositions on The Wild Joy. It’s a title I take to be somewhat ironic, for despite the resplendent flora which graces the album’s cover, the title of the first piece, ‘Sine proprio’ translates, depending on your choice of reference source, as ‘without property’, ‘without possession’, or ‘poverty’. Whether or not this is a reference to a physical or spiritual poverty isn’t apparent, but what this nine-and-a-half minute dronescape does possess is a wealth of texture as the layers build and vibrate against one another.

‘The Shape of Time’ is very much constructed around contrasts; a whining, scraping drone nags the conscious level of listening, while a low, rumbling bassy resonance lingers way below, and it’s something you feel as much as hear. In the space between, incidentals drift in and out. In the distance, gongs chime and fade slowly, and the disparity between their timing and that of the pulsating throb which has begun to build is disorientating, unsettling.

‘Epithalamion’ marks a dramatic shift – in every way, starting with the change of instrumentation, and by no means ending with the change of approach, with a wild, undisciplined key-bashing crescendo occupying the first couple of minutes, before giving way to a wheezing sound like an organ on the brink of expiry. With its origins in the classical age, an epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This, however, sounds more like a piano being pushed down six flights of stairs, before a ghastly gasp sputters along interminably for the remainder of the duration. I pity the bride this was penned for.

Things are different again on ‘Fulaxos’: there, the baritone guitar comes into its own and to the fore, played conventionally, a picked, rolling motif that’s brooding, even doomy provides the starting point for a piece which gradually unfurls toward a place of light and optimism. The final track, which is also the title track, brings us almost full-circle, but there’s a levity to this extended, delicate dronescape, and the soaring vocal only accentuates this sense of elevation.

The joy may be somewhat subdued overall, but it’s there, on what is, ultimately, an accomplished, multi-faceted work.

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loscil – Lake Fire

Posted: 5 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Kranky – 2nd May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Landscapes, in all their forms, have always been significant in the inspiration for loscil works. Scott Morgan is an artist who seems sensitive to his surroundings, and also responsive to them when it comes to the creative process.

This is true of many artists, of course, and any artist who isn’t in some way influenced by their surroundings and the things which happen around them are… largely incomprehensible to me on a personal level. It simply seems unnatural to create art in a void, detached from experience. I’m not advocating that all art should be grounded in the here and now, or even in reality, but even the most imaginative of scenarios require an element of grounding in order to be credible. The most wildly-imagined sci-fi and fantasy only work when there’s a demonstration of an understanding of human character, or how dialogue works, and so on.

The misty, murky shadings of the cover are replicated in sonic form on ‘Arrhythmia’, the first of the album’s nine compositions. Where are indecipherable whispers eddying behind the piano notes, which gradually blur into a watercolour wash, and a slow pulsing tide slowly rises, only to fall and resurface and fall again.

Interweaving layers create an aural latticework on ‘Bell Flame’, the different tempos of the rippling waves merge together effortlessly to create a shimmering, ever-shifting fabric that’s soft, almost translucent. These supple, subtle ambient works are far from abstract, although their forms are vague to distinguish, and single release ‘Candling’, it so proves, is exemplary of the album’s finely-balanced layerings and contrasts.

With ‘Sparks’ preceding ‘Ash Clouds’, one might be tempted to perceive some form of narrative, or at least a linearity in their pairing: the two six-minute pieces drift invisibly from one to the next, although ‘Ash Clouds’ is heavier, darker, an elongated drone providing one of the album’s moodiest, most oppressive pieces. ‘Flutter’ is appropriately titles, and warps and bends in a somewhat disorientating, disconcerting fashion, creating an effect not dissimilar from the room-spin of inebriation, while the title track concludes the album with a lot of very little, as long, low droning notes hang heavy. It’s pure desolation, and yet… there is something which rises upwards other than smoke and flame – a gasping breath and the sound of a thousand souls transported in vapour.

There are beats on this album, but they’re almost subliminal, a heartbeat underneath the mix, and provide a sense of orientation like fence posts visible through fog or low cloud on a barren moor. More often than not, though, the rhythms come from the interactions between the different elements as they meet and then separate once again. The abstract nature of the work somehow compels the listener to not only fill the blank spaces with their own sensory and emotional input, but also to visualise in the mind’s eye what they may look like. As such, Lake Fire, while largely tranquil, sedate, and even soothing in parts, is stimulating, and to more than just the ears.

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Gintas K – Atmosfera

Posted: 2 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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9th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

With his latest offering, Gintas K promises a work of ‘ambience, electroacoustical micromelodies and noise played and record live without overdub.’ That he is so relentlessly active is perhaps one of the reasons its possible for him to create such wild improvised works on a first-take basis – which in turns means it’s possible to crank out new releases at such a staggering rate.

The first of the seven sequentially-numbered pieces is eleven and a half minutes in duration, and begins as a barely audible drip, a tiny trickling sound at the fringe of perception. Instantly I find myself on edge: it’s a sound I’ve become increasingly and acutely aware of in recent days, as the shower in my bathroom – only an internal stud wall away from my office where I listen and write – has progressed from a slow and infrequent drip to a full, continuous dribble, a nagging, torturous sound which has led me to place the shower head in the bath in order to mute it. There’s something of a liquid, and sometimes foamy, frothy sound to many of Gintas’ works, and Atmosphera begins with all the promise of being another one of these. And, indeed, as the drip and trickle increases in rate to become a gurgling stream, there is a sense of growing volume – in terms of liquid, rather than sonically. But a sparse piano rings out over the babbling stream, and as the piece progresses, creaks and bleeps and bumps and strange warps in the very fabric of time and space disrupt the flow. And yet, as the abstract interruptions and distractions become increasingly frequent and ever-more alien, sometimes extending to washes of fizzing distortion, and even fill-on frenzies of chaotic noise, echoing drips and splashes, like water falling from above into the lake at the bottom of a heigh-vaulted cavern, and reverberating piano notes remain at the core of this bewildering sonic collage.

There is a certain sense of evolution as the pieces run into one another: by Atmosphera #3, there is a sense of ambience blended with dissonance, and slow pulsations merge with the brooding and often melancholic piano lines, and these elements certainly contrast with the organic yet equally turbulent, almost artificial grunts and gurgles. Atmosphera #5 is the sound of lasers set to stun, with robotic squawks and a relentless whistle of feedback that hits right at the tinnitus pitch and congeal into concoction of wrongness, like a stew with a bunch of ingredients that should never be combined.

The album winds down gradually, sparse piano notes and a soft trickling liquid flow slowly descending, falling, and fading away…

Something about listening to Atmosfera is like watching a large fish tank. Just as the fish flit blithely and without any attention to the world beyond their own, darting here and there without any predictable linear path, so Atmosfera doesn’t follow a linear flow – and is all the better for it.

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