Mountain Black — Closing In
This CD release is the debut release from Mountain Black, which is the solo project of Australian sound artist, sound recordist( working on films with such a mixed subject matter as Polish thriller Acts of God, & Australian trans-gender school teacher Documentary T Is for Teacher), artists & designer Martin Kay.
The CD conists of ten separate tracks in all, which last between just under a minute to just over the twelve & a half minute mark. But in reality this release functions best as one long shifting trip, instead of a selection of individual stand alone tracks.
The album opens with a mixture of whistling wind texture, minipulated and muffled nature based field recordings. With-in a minute or so we’ve moved into layered 'n' noisy modified crowd records, and morphed 'n' simmering electro cut textural rises, before we drift back into more subtle & drifting recordings of what sounds like a child chattering in a tunnel.
From here onwards the album effectively drifts from stripped nature based field recordings (sometimes subtle undercut by drone texture) of water, insects, birds, rain, fire crackle etc. Onto muffled & morphed masses of other field recording/ found sound texturing, which are mixed with drone set or electro morphed abstract instrumentation. Over to sudden/fleeting dense, & at times quite noisy risers that have a very unsettling/ psychiatrically unwell feel about them. Through-out the album nicely seesaws between dense dwells & more stripped down texturing.
“Closing In” is an effective & captivating sound journey that shifts from the subtle, to the more cyptic & dense sound-making….but there's always an unsettling or dread filled vibe to it’s moody cinematic sound art settings. I look forward to hearing what Kay & this project do in the future