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Absorption - Absorption It begins with Golden Age’s dirty scrambling guitars and scratchy beat. Almost immediately there’s a shift in mood—a gradual build of heady, trippy beats, repetitive, hypnotic guitar, and occasional blasts of ambience.
Uncompromising, yet accessible, Absorption soaks up the musical surroundings of several genres and times, and spits them back at you as an intoxicating soup of fragmented and engaging audio.
Whereas Golden Age has its head in the clouds, Dodgy Meat’s feet are firmly planted in the urban, with its beats and whispers recalling the darkness of a lonely city street, populated only with those you don’t care to meet. Drums and guitars echoing into the black in a way that would make Joy Division proud, layer upon layer of sound is thrust at the listener, infrequently and abruptly pausing so you can draw breath.
Exhilaration is initially frozen for Dead Slow, as Absorption takes another trip to the stratosphere, creating a piece that can justifiably be hailed as a classic. Haunting, stretched melodies dance around each-other, and the beat ambles along. The beauty is within its simplicity and anyone dismissing it as boring is missing the point: this one’s as much about the spaces in between.
Thieves are Operating picks up the pace, its relentless beat and lazy vibes once again bordering on the hypnotic; but any suggestion of retirement to mere head-nodding is shattered by the industrial styling of Article 5, which cuts in deep, smashing your skull into submission. Unease continues with the uncomfortable loops of Strike Softly, splendidly contrasted against fairly upbeat rhythms. Soon, though, the threads begin to part, and the elements separate. But focus is regained for the dynamic Spiritual Suicide, whose initial sonic call to action is followed by overlaid loops that demand attention.
Allowed to relax once again, Dialled lets attention slip away somewhat, with downbeat, lazy drums and piano playing against each other, ready to catch the listener off-guard, and drown them within the pseudo-aquatic atmosphere and occasional screams of Sn109. The vocal jars, but can anything be truly out of place in a place that creates hybrids of hybrids? Not according to Absorption, and many of the aspects of other pieces are brought together for the majestic finale, 4000x Times the Mass of the Sun. The piece again revels in contrasts and the impact of one sound on another, on the listener being bounced back and forth while also nodding obediently to the beat.
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