The joy of hearing Side A fade out, walking over to the turntable, flipping the record to Side B and dropping the needle again to hear the clang of a gong that starts things up again. It’s a gift to play a part in an album’s forward motion.
Composing music under a different set of constraints
Merrin Karras (aka Brendan Gregoriy)’s album, Silent Planet flew under my radar when it was released digitally in 2020. I had picked up (and enjoyed) Apex a few years earlier, but you know how it goes: so many labels, so much music, so little time. I started paying more attention to A Strangely Isolated Place last year after getting a tip about Illuvia’s Iridescence Of Clouds (although not in time to snag the vinyl; really hoping for a second run!). Good timing on my part—ASIP decided that Silent Planet was worthy of a physical release. The 40-minute piece was remastered, split into two halves, and pressed to wax for 2022.
The backstory of the album is engaging enough on its own. According to A Strangely Isolated Place, where other releases under the Merrin Karras moniker might take months to complete, Gregoriy challenged himself to put together a mini-album in a much shorter period of time, with the goal of letting things flow and go where they felt like going. In two days, Silent Planet was realized. To add a little more flavor, it’s also the first Merrin Karras work that involves any percussive elements.
All very interesting, but how does it sound? I’ll start by saying that I feel fortunate to have heard this for the first time as a physical piece. That might seem counterintuitive; what sense is there in taking a perfectly good 40-minute work and splitting it in two? For me, it’s that extra level of engagement with Gregoriy’s ideas in their corporeal form. The joy of hearing Side A fade out, walking over to the turntable, flipping the record to Side B and dropping the needle again to hear the clang of a gong that starts things up again. It’s a gift to play a part in an album’s forward motion.
Silent Planet is cosmic ::
Yes, yes; I know. We still haven’t gotten to the part where I talk about how it sounds. In a nutshell, as its title would suggest, Silent Planet is cosmic, but it’s far from silent. The entirety of the first side is this amazing, enveloping build. Melodic figures make themselves known, accented by metal chimes, bells, and the deep resonance of a bass drum. This is slow, graceful music.
Just over 13:00 minutes in, Gregoriy introduces some low end that provides a foundation for the melodies. A few minutes after that the percussion really starts to make itself known. These drums aren’t trying to overwhelm, and in fact, while you start to focus on them, those melodies begin to grow, swirling higher and higher as they pan from left to right and back again. This drama builds for a few minutes and as quickly as it arrived, it fades out. It’s time to flip the record.
Side B begins with the aforementioned gong; a reminder that we’re all still here, that we’re all still moving. The elements from Side A return, but everything has a bit more space. Around the nine-minute mark, things start dropping off, but you can feel the tension building. Before long, all of those layers that had fallen away reintroduce themselves. The sharp report of a floor tom announces that our silent planet is awake.
For the next five minutes, it’s all dizzying melodies, deep, throbbing synth washes, and that rhythm section that simultaneously holds everything together while adding its own color. Now, the drums are more active, more assertive. And yet, Gregoriy is so deft that you almost don’t notice when he reverts to Side A’s ambience to draw everything down and pull you back from the stratosphere. It’s truly magical.
As a first attempt at composing music under a different set of constraints, Silent Planet is a masterpiece. When I was trying to think of ambient touchstones in a similar vein, Pete Namlook’s Silence III came to mind almost immediately. As did Global Communication’s 76 14. I don’t make these comparisons lightly; this record takes you on a trip to a different galaxy in less than an hour. If you have a turntable, I highly recommend grabbing a copy before they’re all gone.
Silent Planet is available on A Strangely Isolated Place. [Bandcamp]
