(04.26.08) Rod Modell’s name will be known as the guy with all the go behind recently resurgent goings-on at Deepchord HQ. DC has been active enough in its own right, but there’s been the added caché of side-project, Echospace, both projects in the vanguard of something of a new wave of dub-techno (cf. Quantec and his Shoreless Recordings, and the likes of BvDub and Atheus). But many will not be aware of how far (back) and how wide his considerable go goes, taking in experimental ambient and psycho-active sound-art on labels like Silent, Hypnos, and Amplexus, long before “minimal” and “dub” had ever rubbed up epithetically against “techno.” Incense and Black Light is perhaps the first recording that seeks to display the wider ambit of his work under one cover. But before that, for the uninitiated…
Previously on channel Modell: in the 80s/90s there was electro-acoustic experimentation – musique concrète, 4-track adventures in lo-fi and field recordings, dabblings in industrial soundscapes and installation work. This issued in the likes of v1.0-1.9 (Silent, 1996), which explored the impact of sound on the human psyche using earth frequencies from NASA, microwave, paranormal recordings, field recordings and both analogue and digital synths to create an esoteric dark ambient opus. Two years later came Sonic Continuum (Hypnos), its two long-format tracks featuring brain hemisphere synchronization frequencies, binaural beats, field recordings, 40 HZ tones, and Tibetan gongs. Even better was The Autonomous Music Project (Soleilmoon sub-label, Lunar, 1998), which harboured a batch of fabulously suggestive dark-light soundscapes incorporating “electro-organic, virtual reality audio textures” into a recording which, in the current climate of texturally abraded digital-denying ambient, sounds freshly contemporary.
So, with all this in mind, Modell’s interest in a wider world of audio and inclination towards analogue processes can be seen as properly “organic,” sprung not from passing fad but from enduring love of sound in itself, miles from the abstracted template fetishism of mnml. A favoured late-night pursuit of Modell’s is making middle-of-the-night recordings with his portable DAT recorder and mike, these informing Incense & Black Light’s dark-leaning environmental-infused inquiries at the interface between ambient, dub and techno. It comes as more of a surprise for the label than for Modell, with Plop! having sadly slipped from initial incarnation as a home for low-key, leftfield minimalist soundscaping (think 12k) toward indie-insipid pop-tronica (a la Morr). No need for qualms on this score, anyway, as Modell’s sound-vision is untarnished by this association, throwing together hissing, roiling atmospheres in beatless space at one end, at the other assembling some thumping DC-style post-techno, taking in staging posts in the in-between.
Some highlights: opener “Aloeswood,” with its dramatic lashings of crackle and churning eddies of static riding over the ghosts of 4/4 kicks; “Hotel Chez Moi” firing depth-charged synth-rockets into the distance, echoed and panned as if through a cavernous cylinder. “Body Sonic” letting slivers of sunlight slip into the twilight zone, bringing in new timbralities in its brash orientalist synth curlicues spiralling over technoid throb. “Cloud Over,” and its glazed re-take on Echocord moments, ceding to the more insistent thump-pulse of “Temple,” subverted by high-pitched panning and jarring sci-fi wooze. Back to beatless with “Ultraviolet World” and its vast chordal waves breaking, all fizzing air currents, teeming grain and viscous smearage – a dubbed-out analogue version of Tim Hecker’s Ultraviolet visions. Then “Red Light,” and its final slow-motion lope-crawl through deserted streets, spectrally coloured with echoing gaseous stabs vapour-trailing into night-haze before “Morning Again” comes amid cloudbanks of shimmering incense, as black light is banished. A new skin for the old psychoactive ceremonies, with its drone-gauze, its gushes of steamy hiss, and subtle speaker-quake, all spun through reverberant echo-space, this year’s Modell is decidedly top of the range.
Incense & Black Light is out now on Plop. [Purchase
