Substak :: Empty Halls EP (See Blue Audio)

Empty Halls is a longer meditation, generating a haunting atmosphere that invites the listener to become lost inside its unfolding darkness. In this way, it can also provide peace and comfort in the darkness of wintertime.

The raw sound of a large, cavernous space

Notable for its absence of humanity, the sound of “Empty Halls” (22:35) is minimalistic and constant, and gliding down dark vacant concourses feels so real. The experience is timeless, time does not exist in Empty Halls. The music evokes a sense of spaces, filled not with people, but with the echoes of what once was. Utility is not an issue, appreciating atmospheric soundscapes is always subjective, an interpreted experience. One person might hear warm steady fans humming and rumbling, with some odd bumps and dull clanks in slow motion.

Is that the distant hum of diabolical, archaic machinery in the background? Another listener might find unsettling but contemplative qualities of an eerie, ghostlike sonic passage evoking a past time that’s connected yet somehow feels distant from our own. I fell asleep in the elevator shaft, I hear mostly just the warm steady sound of the blower up there somewhere. Sometimes the elevator gets into the action, bringing the sound of a new humming motor and an odd bang with a loud groan.

Nothing happens. The raw sound of a large, cavernous space, an ancient place perhaps, long uninhabited, where an eerie stillness pervades. Maybe we hear things that are not really there but conjured from our imagination and transmitted through strange frequencies, abstract minimal drones with a frosty, detached atmosphere. The air is dry, and the sonic crackle serves as a layer of dust. This would cover the sounds of the diggers down in the tunnel — we’re breakin’ out of here. I have not tested this theory because the tunnel takes all our time now. This is a world of shadows, but where gears also turn and occasionally jolt to disrupt the heavy motion.

Empty Halls is a longer meditation, generating a haunting atmosphere that invites the listener to become lost inside its unfolding darkness. In this way, it can also provide peace and comfort in the darkness of wintertime. Substak operates in three spheres: deep dubby techno, meticulous ambient pieces, and extended abstract drone soundscapes. Experimentation is part of See Blue Audio’s ethos, so Empty Halls has company in the See Blue Audio catalog.

Empty Halls is available on See Blue Audio. [Bandcamp]