There is a sadness, a loneliness, to Stroj’s sound. Bleak drone ebbing and flowing. Liquid is as important throughout. Constant currents, streams swirl and emotional torrents rain.
With the onus put on “club” or “dance” music it can be easy to forget the more experimental side of electronics. Testtoon is a label dedicated to that end of the spectrum dubbed “other.” For five years now the Belgium imprint has been sourcing musicians who dare to be different, to leave aside the demands of the DJ and focus on the experience.
Sova Stroj is a new name, but his style comes steeped in the past.“We Danced When The Sky Turned Red” is as absorbing a piece of ambient music as you’re likely to hear. Thick, juddering bars circle and circle, echoing into each other to produce a vivid and unsettling atmosphere. Clicks and field recordings break this bulwark of bass as sounds melt and morph. Stroj blends tones. Resonance and strings blur and beam in the cold winter sun of “As Days Grow Silent We Love Each Other.” And it’s resonance and bass that characterize the aquatic signals of “Departure (To Walk into the Waves.) Bleeps and radar blips echo and fade, washed over by looming static and elongated strings.
There is a sadness, a loneliness, to Stroj’s sound. Bleak drone ebbing and flowing. Liquid is as important throughout. Constant currents, streams swirl and emotional torrents rain. Music that brims with solitude, but not in a negative way. Instead within these forlorn sea scapes the would-be mariner is asked to keep his gaze and think. Within these bulges, these echoes, these sorrow strewn waves there is an awareness which asks, never demands, for concentration and a quiet moment of true reflection. A Silent Earth where you once again stop, and listen.
Silent Earth is available on Testtoon.
