Fans of modern IDM and experimental music will love this, especially those fond of Autechre’s latest works. Find yourself a good dark place and turn this up loud. You’ll thank me later if you survive the journey.
t.e.s.o.’s new album costruzione 04 is a deep, dark ambient trajectory. It relies heavily on atmosphere and effects but in an efficient, masterly way. Perhaps it’s because a certain love of things subterranean, sepulchral and damp has overtaken me of late but it reminds this reviewer of masterpiece horror films such as The Descent, Lair of The White Worm and A Dark Song.
“doufor” starts with a screeching crystalline theme, a nice atmospheric intro to an easy, slimy into dark place. “P_e elp” follows form with digital demons howling their way into battle with scraping drums and sound effects pressing the listener into the darkness of an alien temple rite. The distorted, off-kilter rhythm that opens “0xis.Xfs.OwtKm” unfurls into an atonal symphony of the damned. “Pot-axi-iodate” skitters in with clipped percussion and icy stabs over oily reverb drenched soundscapes and re-sampled voices of the damned. “Pectina” reminds one of Pan_Sonic’s masterful 808 and homemade noise machine workouts, adding the flair and ruin of digital artifacts and swirling effects and hammering compressed, percussion. “Fled iv” is aquatic in its murk, like a sea monster rising from the depths to try out its newly formed land legs as the piece evolves into a smokey, droning swash of feedback and distorted wails. “Basile” brings a return of the peripatetic with hissing, flickering drums, bubbling broken vocal samples and scant melodic strings. “Rnk-d2” reminds us of Autechre with all the digital, FM-sampled goodness of broken machines trying their damnedest to come alive and make dance music with their newly sentient CPUs. “Black On Maroon” closes the album with a elegiac, droning paean to the darkness in t.e.s.o’s sound and fury, thumping and loping with glittering stabs of steely timbres.
Fans of modern IDM and experimental music will love this, especially those fond of Autechre’s latest works. Find yourself a good dark place and turn this up loud. You’ll thank me later if you survive the journey.
costruzione 04 is available on Aperture.
