JEREMY BIBLE & JASON HENRY
Vryashn
GOS37
Gear Of Sand 2008
02 Tracks. 54mins18secs

The two suites of ambitious, sweeping sounds that express but never wholly manifest themselves here, superimposed as they are in layers to infinity, were inspired by the shifting perspectives and hallucinogenic detail of dreams.  The mind reels in the declamatory breathlessness and multilayered incantations, out of which slip assiduous sonic close-ups that are soon swallowed by depersonalized electronic shadows, and which return hereafter only as distorted or transformed traces that haunt and push the works further still.

The duo’s approach is anything but radical.  They draw heavily from piano and a slew of musical and non-musical instruments, which are then subtly treated through a laptop.  It becomes exceptional owing to its almost shocking organizational smoothness that belies the multiplicity of its sources and therefore highlights how ambient music has internal collage logic at its centre.

Some very substantial and evolving electronic sluicing abounds on Part II, ranging from petite fog exercises, with blurred piano chords winking like stars, post-industrial roughness and rippling textures to drones that arc deep into the night sky.  Things progress slowly but eventfully; and eventually gently-contoured textures sweep in and then oxidize, while faint striations and distressed electronics obscure the background and create an atmosphere of unexpected menace.  Before the work ends, another turn of logic finds its place, as some digital flutter and micro-sonics swell into a fecund, almost celebratory whole.  Few albums so thoroughly and unapologetically apply themselves to such a trenchant aesthetic and then manage to mine so much from it.

4.2/5

Jeremy Bible & Jason Henry | Gear Of Sand
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