Visions - Summoning The Void [Cyclic Law - 2010]Visions are Frederic Arbour from Canada and this release is the follow up his 2005 album Lapse. It’s put out by Canadian label Cyclic Law. It’s quite clear from the first couple of minutes that what we have here is a band that are very familiar with the long reverb time settings on their effects units. Unfortunately for my ears the reverb is heavily over used making the whole thing sound artificial and superficial.
I would imagine Lustmord were a big influence but whereas Lustmord could be rightly or wrongly described as innovative and ground breaking I find this album to be rather clichéd and dull.
To be a little more descriptive and perhaps less dismissive the tracks follow a fairly similar format. There is a long deep synth swell some deep slowed down vocal noise and some ritualistic type bells and or scraping sounds. Each track follows a similar pattern and each piece builds and rises and falls within the boundaries of the sounds I’ve laid out. The only track that seems to stray at all from this path is the title track “Summoning The Void.” This piece has a fair bit of development in it and whereas the same elements are present they are used in a more interesting way.
On a more positive note the tracks that are on Summoning The Void are a step forward from the excerpts I’ve managed to hear from Lapse. There is, even though limited, still more development within the pieces and they’re slightly less one dimensional but I’d still like to see the reverb used more sparingly and less obviously. It’d be far more convincing if Visions could actually get the sounds they’re after naturally rather than having to artificially process them so heavily afterwards.
I couldn’t recommend this as something to buy but I would still be interested to see if they can take these ideas and push them a bit further and make a professional less artificial sounding album
David Bourgoin
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