Supersilent — 13
Clattering metallic percussion, whining detuned saw waves. A visionary dimness. This sound is similar in many ways to the original wave of industrial music, a muffled and irregular pulse enshrouded in forlorn feedback siren calls. Dingy junk sounds are delayed and rearranged into irreverent anti-beats that sputter and choke like an old machine, missing a note here and there but never failing completely. This sort of mulched up sludge percussion is not unlike Vladislav Delay.
Most of the textures on the album are harsh, cold and grainy, sounding as if they were sourced from acoustic instruments, then subject to unforgiving processing. Supersilent does not spare the listeners their fervent apocalyptic forboding, or the physical pain of a shrill distortion. Furthermore, the distortions often have the cutting wintry sharpness of a digital plugin, rather than the warmth than amplifier.
The album's first half has a sense of sparse emptiness. Repeatedly sounding a bent, wailing drone, the musicians are holding the space, rather than running amok. The spastic free jazz tendencies of the group are reabsorbed into the shambling, broken cadence of the thing, the beast's irregular gait, the scuttle of a many-legged bug.
The 2nd track is 4 minutes of suspenseful synth pads, cinematic in a vintage horror sort of way, the soundtrack to our protagonist's vain attempts to hide from the killer, second guessing each fearful step. This anticipatory shimmer creates the welcome feeling of a narrative arc to the recording.
"5" is a bit of a sore thumb, 7 minutes thoroughly remove me from the oneiric subterrain thus far established. The synthesizer in this track is set to a rhythmic trance arpeggiation, locking into a tempo whenever the key is struck. As a user of synthesizers, I know that nearly all keyboards come with presets like this, and that attempting to play them in a beatless context results in an awkward clutter, the loop restarting whenever a key is struck. The latter half of the track involves a lot of aggressive chord stabs from an organ. A lot of bright melodic material is casually thrown about. It has definate aggression to it, but seems oddly lively and unfocused compared to the subtle spaces elsewhere on the disk, the sound space lacking in depth.
The flute soliloquy in the 6th track is the most conventionally musical and beautiful moment on the album, a haunting lullaby murmur in a soft deepness. In this all too brief 2 minutes, Supersilent show themselves capable of poetic classical music.
In odd contrast, the 13 minutes of "7" are the most trying endurance test of the record, a bit-crunched, ring-modulated whine of the sharpest digital grain. The reckless spontaneity and blasting volume of this sort of piece is far nearer the 'harsh noise' realm than dark ambient or free jazz, sounding like a rambling mid 90's Merzbow jam. Dynamics and imagery are usually ignored in this sort of music, in favor of a cathartic mental whitewash which can't easily be evaluated for quality. Personally, I prefer the group's ambient side, as other artists have created more pleasingly rich noise textures, and these noisy tracks induce fatigue in a way the quieter pieces don't. My ears have a difficult time recovering to absorb more subtle material after a long loud piece like "7". The way quieter and louder pieces are scattered at random through the album begins to feel awkward.
Supersilent captures a sense of the otherworldly which is missing from a lot of free improvisation. I quite enjoy several of the pieces on the album, but I find myself wishing there was a more well considered balance between subtle, evocative soundscapes and cutting distortion. The dream visions in story-like sequence which begin to form in the album's first half are thoroughly dispelled by the chaotic scribbling of the second half. The few moments of emotive melody found here are absolutely wonderful, and I can't help but wish there was more included. Disappointingly, closer "9" drowns its orchestral, melancholic beauty and chordwork in an oppressive blown speaker crackle. The imaginative scope and narrative dynamism of the music is done a disservice by the constantly obliterated timbres. Previous Supersilent albums haven't necessarily had this issue, though they've certainly created noise before. All in all, an evocative but ugly album, difficult to listen to in its entirety.