Mvuent listen to this for us.
thanks man
I've never listened to them before but I read a Sean Booth interview where he intriguingly praises how they "imply" music, so that's my main reference point starting off.
right away I hear what he means. as expected, it's very desolate and metallic, evocative of a wasteland of abandoned industrial buildings, similar to the world in eraserhead. and very close up, so you're probably inside or right next to one of them. but the foreground sounds form an incidental-sounding melody that's oddly peaceful, a kind of lullaby.
still no changes on a macro level, so I'm forced to focus more on the main noise melody. I often think of distorted sounds as suggesting aggression or violence, but the interplaying voices (spirits?) here sound weary, as though they've been "singing" that same phrase for hundreds of years. maybe when they started the place you're in wasn't as lonely. not weak/faltering though, there's a lot of force and weight in the sounds.
not sure what to make of the last 30 seconds. the ringing background detail is now all you can hear. you must have moved away from the main sound sources without noticing, like you might in a dream.
but it's definitely a place, not so much a story unfolding in the present. nothing really happens but it would probably ruin the experience if something did. encourages "horizontal" listening where you notice different nuances in constant sounds that are only subtly changing, rather than anticipating new events. some the overtones are really nice in their own right.
what really impresses me is how this blurs the line between diegetic and and non diegetic sound. it's evocative in that you can imagine physical sources for the sounds and a world beyond them, but the sounds are also emotive/"musical" in a way that you wouldn't get from a field recording. as a result the whole thing feels haunted/magical, as though there's some otherworldly presence you can sense. abandoned pipes and furnaces speaking to you.
that's all I got for now. there are a few tracks that I'll be trying to get impressions of soon though. if anyone else liked this thread as much as I do lol