(03.01.05) Jason Sloan’s A White, Bleeding Silence is an hour of elongated tones
that have been stretched so far that they’ve become nearly transparent
and all sense of melody has been attenuated to a point of infinite
modulation. The titles of the four tracks — “A Beginning,” “Dawn,”
“Ocean,” “Light” — are non-descript New Age terms that evoke vast
open spaces and Sloan’s music certainly speak of endless horizons and
the slow-motion rotation of planetary cycles. The magic of Sloan’s
work though is how he pulls from both Kevin Shields’ My Bloody
Valentine wall of guitar sound and Robert Fripp’s perpetually looping
Frippertronics to make something nearly both and nearly neither. A
White, Bleeding Silence is both empty and full. Much like the title.
Glacial ambient music shouldn’t be such a confusing thing and being
able to listen to A White, Bleeding Silence isn’t meant to be seen as
attempting to decipher a Zen koan. Sloan offers a reference to
Antoine Artaud in his liner notes, citing the performance artist’s
statements about the bombardment of one’s senses and the theatre of
cruelty that arises in live performances, and this overwhelming ocean
of sound is Sloan’s approach to the exploration of both sound and
silence on this record. The first thirty seconds of “A Beginning” are
so soft as to be inaudible and the growth of the guitar textures is
languorous in execution (it is three minutes or so into the nineteen
minute track before sound becomes more than a wash of textured tones).
And, really, “A Beginning” is just an opening statement — multiple
waves of a long tone melody that washes over the listener — until it
spends itself and the sound dissolves into a rainstorm. The storm —
and distant thunder — take us into “Dawn,” another series of long
textures that move and undulate slowly like a half speed Labradford
record.
“Ocean” and “Light” are sparser affairs. “Ocean” is filled with a
breath of processed vocals, a lone voice that takes up the singular
cry of the guitar like a thin wind that surfs across the slowly
rolling waves of a broad ocean. “Light” rotates around itself as the
tones are more crystalline — less filled with the gritty wash that
pervaded “A Beginning” — and, while the others seemed like waves of
sound rolling out to infinity, “Light” sounds like it is slowly
revolving cone of sound that settles down around your head. A White,
Bleeding Silence is a record of generative meditation: as each sound
ends, another begins in an endless cycle of ebb and flow. Very
restful.
A White, Bleeding Silence is out now on Slobor Media.
