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 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Brendan Murray - Commonwealth [23 Five - 2008]

Commonwealth is a single long form piece of hypnotic, captivating and dense drone craft by US sound artist Brendan Murray- this is his forth full length release.

The piece last in all just shy of the 50 minutes mark and spends most of it’s running time building and building on it's self again and again to give this very tight and quite airless harmonic field which I guess is best described as almost air craft motor or sustained vacuum cleaner like drone but with of course with a more harmonic edge. There’s no hint as to what Murray is using to make the sound here but to me it sounds like a mass of sustained organ or synth tones, but it could equally be sustained string or piano tone.  Over time you become almost one with the tight dense pitchers of sound and the subtle sonic 'notching up'. But the most rewarding and brain scrambling moments come when you think Murray is starting to fade the piece out as it seems to dip down smaller and thinner you, mind convinced it will stop altogether soon but Murray skilful keeps this thinning down up for what seems like hours but must only be about 20 minutes or so.

An intriguing and mind altering piece of drone build up then stripping down that will get you caught like a rabbit in the headlights locked into it’s growing then debilitating  sonic state.

Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5

Roger Batty
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