Gridfailure / Feel Happiness — Split EP
Gridfailure / Feel Happiness split EP is a digital self-released album, and is available for listening and ordering on the bandcamp pages of the projects.
The album cover was designed by Dave Brenner, who offten does the cover art his project Gridfailure. The cover is a digital collage of several photos of forests and trees, superimposed on each other and processed with different effects. It is difficult to understand what is the background or foreground here. However, we can clearly see the orange rays of the sun breaking through branches and leaves, as well as black and white curved tree trunks or creepers. On the right edge of the cover are gray logos (names) of projects, written vertically. The cover is made in rather dissonant and dirty shades of orange, red and grey, with a lot of black, which, apparently, is a side effect of overlapping several pictures on top of each other. I can’t say that I like this cover. It seems it was done in a hurry. I didn't see any of the compositions and ideas here, so I'm not sure how the cover relates to the music of the album, which, in my opinion, is rather interesting.
The album, with a total duration of just over thirty minutes, consists of seven tracks. The first four tracks are by Gridfailure. The remaining three tracks are works by Feel Happiness.
Gridfailure presents us with four monolithic tracks, that are very close in style and sound. These are quite rich sound tracks made at the junction of such genres as Power Electronics, Drone, Ambient, Noise and Industrial. Perhaps the most successful definition of Gridfailure style would be the term Sound Art. Much attention is paid to sound textures and their combination. So, at the same time, we can hear deep humming, dry noises and atmospheric synthesizers, which are supported by classic industrial rhythms reminiscent of the work of Deutsch Nepal. Also, it seems there are fragments of field records were used too. A very professional combination of all these elements creates a feeling of unreality and detachment. However, one can also here nervousness and aggression in the sound too.
Feel Happiness tracks also represent a single sound canvas, both in sound and in atmosphere. Lane Oliver presents us with a slightly different approach to writing compositions. This, based on Death Industrial, is a sound collage combining Drone elements of heavy and dirty guitar sounds, keyboards, field recordings and avant-garde violin parts that were recorded by guest musician Victoria Rose. I believe that all of the Feel Happiness compositions presented on this split are quite organic and original sounding, with their own mood and rather gloomy atmosphere.
As a result, we have a very strong split album of two experimental projects that have a different approach to writing music, but managed to create a single musical concept for this joint release. This may not be the perfect album. Each listener will find both advantages and disadvantages. But for me, one of the main drawbacks of this split is the releases artwork. The visual and musical parts of the album should create a single whole and complement each other- Here I did not feel that. Ending this review, I think it be great to see this release in a physical - as I certainly feels this EP deserves it.