(02.16.09) Echospace [Detroit] and new sub-label Intrusion’s releases can have a tendency to appear somewhat esoteric. The sheer number of remixes, reworks, remixes of remixes etc often leaves one wondering exactly what’s what anymore and just how little material has actually been produced by Steve Hitchell. How much mileage there is left in continual reworks of the same tracks, however different those reworks may appear.
The Seduction of Silence is likely to shut the mouths of anyone who doubted that there is still fertile ground and previously unreleased material to produce an album that works as complete listening experience. It may compile a number of tracks from previous 12″ singles that have been around for a while now, but it sets those tracks down in a new context, a new environment, one that can be enjoyed over an almost full 80 minutes. Not since The Coldest Season has there been such a fully realized and complete Hitchell/Modell release as this, and it is good to hear epics like “Tswana Dub” in this new context.
This release does seem to suffer from something of a confused image problem, though. A name like The Seduction of Silence and track titles like “Montego Bay,” “Little Angel” or “A Night to Remember” rub abrasively up against colder, more remote titles like “Intrusion Dub,” “Reflection 1” or “Tswana Dub,” and this feeling of slightly at odds approaches comes across in the material itself too.
Take, for example, the inclusion of vocals from Paul St. Hilaire on “Angel Version” and “Little Angel.” It’s debatable as to whether they add or detract from the entire experience. On the one hand it renders the album in a more traditional and reverential dub framework, but on the other is a little obvious, and arguably becoming something of a cliche. In many ways it temporarily quashes some of the moody mystery, ambience and atmosphere of Hitchell’s other work as the vocals don’t seem truly connected to anything else on the album. You can make up your own mind, but suffice it to say, though “Angel Version” is the superior track of the two, neither is anywhere near as striking as the other purely wordless pieces on The Seduction of Silence.
“Montego Bay” sets things spinning in evocative and panoramic Echospace style, a wildlife chatter and flutter echoes through a great ravine, offering shelter from the superheated Caribbean sun with a delicate sea-spray sheen of noise heard from a distance. This, like several other tracks on The Seduction of Silence is more atmosphere than mood or emotion, a sense of space and place the dominant characteristic. “Seduction” is an intense and heady overdose; it swoons and sways in a humid evening heat, the thrum of cooling fans breathing out across hallucinatory bass and reflecting pulses. “A Night to Remember” is somewhat less inspiring, combining too much movement with too overstretched a running time, whilst a number of brilliantly un-assuming ambient pieces provide just the right amount of sultry, but revitalizing relief.
The Seduction of Silence reaches its floor-filling peak early with the mighty “Tswana Dub” and “Intrusion Dub.” It’s hard to imagine that there can be a more perfectly crafted yet lo-fi bass-line than that featured in “Twsana Dub,” which can be felt in the very bones, whilst “Intrusion Dub” evolves so seductively over its near twelve minutes it’s nothing short of love when the fluttering harmonica hits the wreaths of analogue crackle and shuffling techno rhythms. These two works, both previously available only on vinyl, are the glittering jewels set into the album’s crown, and it is good to finally have these two colossi on CD.
The Seduction of Silence is a first for the Echospace [Detroit] label: a fully fledged album of new/existing material as a continuous, long-form listening experience, the previous two CD releases on the label being remix compilations. What you get is precisely what you would expect from an Echospace [Detroit] release and thus it comes highly recommended, but be quick –this release is disappearing fast!
The Seduction of Silence is out now on echospace [detroit].
