
Jenks Miller - Zen Automata Volume One: V’ [Small Doses - 2010] | ‘Zen Automata Volume One: V’ is all about very repetitive & looped machine like drones. It’s certainly not a easy listening by any means & I can see that a lot of people will not get on with this, but if like me you enjoy very repetitive sonic torture like HNW matter or stuck caustic drone music this could well be for you. The Cdr comes in a rather neat semi transparent art paper fold around with this screen printed black monster drip like drawing on it by Jenks himself. And sonically on offer here is a near on 40 minute track of mainly very repetitive machine hum or drone matter. For most of the tracks running time the tone is akin to a continuous & mind drilling looped/ circular tone which I guess sounds like what you’d get if you held your head against one of those shoe polishing machines you get in more up market hotels for a extended period of time. Miller does subtle move & shift the layers of tones towards the start of the track, but as it goes on it starts to become very stuck & repetition based in it’s feel, yet there are still the odd very subtle movements with-in the layers of hum & drone that shift under the main very drill central tone. I really find the whole thing strangely appealing, enjoyable & quite original in it’s sound & attack. And when it’s all finished it leaves your ears with this great odd low level buzzing feeling for quite a few minutes after its gone. You’ll only really enjoy this slice of machine drone ‘n’ dwelling if you have a thing for highly repetitive, stuck & monotonous tone studies or 'walls' of unmoving sound. So approach with caution, but if like me you dig such looped & stuck sonic dwells this is very worthy of your time.      Roger Batty
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