Search - Silo :: Alloy

There is a God.

polymer moy | newport | 03/10/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"What can one say when confronted with music like this?

I purchased this on a whim because of the cover art alone. When I first heard this album, and the first track comes through the headphones [prefered listening method here], 'Bulk', youre treated to an off beat hammering drum kit and a thick, trembling drone. You can make out crunchy guitars slide in through the left ear and out the right, self sustaining in a polyrhythmic clinical loop. This is the easy part. You might have heard something like this before, if you've ever indulged in 'drone' music before. Imagine early stars of the lid with an industrial drum kit. The drummer might just have long dark hair, chiseled features and a beard that obscures the rest of his complexion. This is a dark and foreboding opening to what will become one of the seminal tracks of my life. Bulk continues its glorious build with subtle shifts in temperature, slight tweakings on the frequency and resonance knobs, as the gates begin to open. The drumming is like the Terminator, marching forward with its hypnotic stare, until it crashes through the glass window on its harley, letting hell, or heaven [however you wish to imagine this climax] out of the gates. And not tepidly either. with a thick double snap of the snare and a cymbal crash, we enter the climax of 'Bulk' reaches an ecstatic peak most musicians can only dream of. This is pure instrumental bliss, pressing right down at the root of what sound, music, rhythm, build and progressions are, deeply embedded in all humans since birth. this track, if listened to under the right conditions, could give you an epileptic seizure. What astounds me still, and I've owned this album for years and have never heard anything like it since, is how incredibly emotional such a mechanically driven piece can be. I've always loved Autechre, for much the same reason: they give the tin man a heart. But this is above and beyond, and much much different. And it's only the first track.

This album reaches peaks and lets the tide in and out and in and out as each track reveals something with each new listen (that can only be seen, truly, on a massive dose of LSD), as these cold hearted mother-f&*ers drill their philosophy of the love-hate, black-white contrast [theres even a track called 'contrast'], into your skull with every minute of phase-inducing nausea i've ever heard. Who knew the Danish could be this audacious. Bloody vikings rip straight into 'Prime Movers', another oddly signatured track which will have you whiplash your headbang at the 3 and a half minute mark. Though not as overtly emotional as 'Bulk', there is something behind the machine in this track as well that takes over, and seems to throttle the listener AND performer. I can just imagine the drummers eyes dilate and focus in on a crack in the wall as the wild climax of modulated synths and fuzzed guitar play off each other. This is as inhuman as it gets, folks. Incredible. We're drifting off into the next two tracks, which have their merits and are quite necessary in lulling you off into the eye of a clock before the next startling change occurs, however they act as filler in comparison to the previous two. K2 and Motor are VERY stoner drone sounding fills [K2 is a mountain AND a killer strain of weed popular in holland]. ' Contrast' occupies much of the same space as 'Prime Movers', only instead of shipping dangerous synths from one continent to the other, we have a subtly flanging[?phasing?modded?allatonce?] background swell which takes over the typically off kilter drum sig until we're smacked with that cymbal rush again, and another , albeit different climax occurs. The change is less on this track with any foreground, rather the background shifts so subtly at first that when you actually focus in on the swells of flange its as eagerly drunk as salt mines or a co-generation plant on the new jersey turnpike.

The stand-out emotional center is the wonderfully titled 'Evolved as into vertical', driven by a boards of canada like ambient background synth-drone and a delicate sliding guitar riff of only a few notes, and an immaculately recorded processed drum beat which brings us into semi-ambient territory. STUNNING. the velvet continues throughout until we reach a drum-less finale of drones, synths and swells. This sums up the mood that was perfected throughout the cd, a mood I have never quite been able to define, and have never felt since on an album, but have only in key moments in my life, like when flying in an airplane and seeing a shuttle take off from kennedy space center in florida, or getting lost on an oddly dark summer day while driving through stalin-era steel factory, or that time I met myself."