Drowning the Virgin Silence is the suitably dada-esque name of this project by Richard Vergez, a sometime member of Hoor-paar-Kraat. This nicely packaged CD-R comes in a minimal, hand screened cardstock sleeve with some warped music charts on the cover. He's also a visual artist, and the classy, somewhat surreal cover art is a good match for the music contained within its cover.

I listened to this disc on repeat for about four hours straight after hearing it a couple times previous, partly because I liked what I'd heard, and partly because I wanted to figure it out. The disc changes direction at every turn, yet Vergez manages to achieve a seamless unity to the music which almost requires that it be listened to in one sitting. There are tracks which could be considered ambient, loop tracks, vocal tracks (which may or may not also be from tape), a plaintive piano piece, and surrealist music which isn't miles away from early Nurse With Wound.

The entire thing is bathed in a foggy reverb and mysterious scratching and shifting, which pulls it all together. It makes sense only as a dream transcribed onto recording equipment. Beyond the artistic and surreal, Tone is filled with melodic subtleties and some surprisingly straight-forward music. It all sounds simple, yet it's deceptively complex because Vergez never settles for one angle. There's something within each piece to draw your ear in different directions, particularly his use of found sounds and tape loops. There's a grainy quality to the loops which makes them entirely unobtrusive. Tone is tasteful without being dull or stuffy. It seemingly lacks any kind of logic, yet somehow maintains a baffling consistency. So, no, I still haven't figured it out. But I do like it. Oh, and it's limited to 70 copies, and as of this writing it's still available here.