Mike Shiflet — Ichinomiya 5.3.6

Ichinomiya’s  innoxious artwork hardly gives away the ring noisy endurance  testing that lays within. From the covers hazy picture and the album other artwork, you’d be forgiven for thinking this could  be an ambient sound world, but there’s really little ambient about the slow moving and piecing  atmosphere on offer here.

This stands as Mike Shiflet’s first proper released album, with a fair few cdrs under his own name and as  part of Sennic railway and Noumena. The album is built around a slow uncurled noisy low down drilling like tones, much like the sound that one might hear if there drill out side in the street. With which Shiflet slowly modifies and alters the tones over time, bringing in other layers of lower noise clouds and some nice pitch shifting tones over it’s 47 minute playing time. Though little happens in the conventional sense there’s some interesting micro details and shifts in sound layers. And when it ends you find your eara are still ringing for a few mintues afterward!.

I guess in a way it’s almost what one would call noise/ drone or maybe even Zen noise. The problem is there’s too little development  or any interesting  harmonic  or anti harmonic qualities here. Interesting enough, but really requires patience to sit through and wait for the subtle changes to occur.