(05.10.05) A collaboration between David Sullivan (Magwheels) and Jason Crumer
(Aluminum Noise), Amazing Grace folds the drift of processed guitar
into the cavernous expanse of dark ambient echoes. Shards of voices
still haunt these drone spaces, diaphanous ghosts floating in the
reverberating space, while the elongated peal of metallic chimes rise
up from unfathomable depths like time warped ritual noises from
forgotten mechanical societies. Heavy waves of sound roll out from
Revival Times and, like the tiny piano melodies and the whimper
of terrified machinery that scuttles through these tracks, we are
captives of the bleak landscape.
“Faith Healing (Symbols)” swells with broadly painted tones, echoes of
sound that fill every available space before beginning their gradual
decay into silence, while tiny shards of metal fall from high places
to ring out against a bedrock of pitted steel. The voices of
ancestral workers rise up through a heavy fog, trailing streamers of
static. The final track, “—,” is filled with machinery that groans
like a wounded animal, moans of noise and shivering coughs of static
that is the death rattle of the industrial nation. A Morse signal
repeats in “Blind,” a warning beacon sounding from the depths of a
ruined citadel while glacial tones evolve in an elastic melody of
sepulchral lamentation. An icy wind blows in a spectral string
quartet and a phantom bell tree in “Blind Man’s Ears.” Hidden deep
within the mix is a woman’s voice, her words so obscured that she
exists only as an instrument, as a textural element.
While Sullivan’s guitar is the foundation of every track, it is these
many strata of dense sounds that make this record so engaging.
Revival Times is the lugubrious miasma of the Industrial Age
that still haunts the edge of our dreaming lives. Recommended.
Revival Times is out now on Desolation House.
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The return of the Xenomaniacs and their Amazing! feats.
Windy & Carl :: The Dream House/Dedications To Flea EP (Kranky, 2CD)
