shilmafone's Full Review: New Words Machine by Dead Voices On Air
Think about the word "ambient" for a second, and the way it relates to music. When you think of ambient music, maybe you think of Brian Eno, he of Music for Airports and Another Green World, he of extended synth tones and found sound, extended to lengths unimaginable, he of the experiments found on David Bowie's Berlin trilogy. That's a good start. Or maybe you think of Moby, quiet beats repeated ad infinitum, little melodies trickling over the top, entirely non-distracting and unobtrusive, but still interesting nonetheless.
Maybe you think of the waterfalls and rain forests. Maybe you think of CDs with titles like "Sounds of the Waterfall" or "Sounds of the Rain Forest".
Maybe you think of Yanni. Of course, if the word "ambient" makes you think of Yanni, that will make me sad, but this is word association, not a pop quiz, and you're entitled to your psyche's subliminal thoughts. I suppose.
Whatever you think of, however, there's a good chance that it sounds nothing like Dead Voices on Air. Dead Voices on Air is the ongoing project of one Mark Spybey (he released his latest album, From Labrador to Madagascar, just a few months ago), once of the brutal industrial noise outfit Zoviet France and also an on-again off-again (and, if rumors are true, on-again again) member of cEvin Key's Skinny Puppy offshoot called Download. By most accounts, however, Dead Voices on Air is Spybey's heart and soul, and he puts everything he has into every Dead Voices on Air release that comes out....even when those releases are months apart -- New Words Machine was released two and a half short months after the previous Dead Voices on Air album, a little something called Hafted Maul. The guy can work fast when he's motivated, that's for sure!
New Words Machine is ambient music. Yet, it's ambient music as created with nary a synth in sight -- this is found sound as run through the filter of one man's sampler, delay pedal, and disturbed psyche. Spybey, all by himself, is responsible for about 44 of the 56 minutes on this album, 44 minutes that encapsulate all of three tracks. The album opens with its masterpiece, as it happens: "Dream Catcher" is a harrowing, 19-minute journey into the nothing, as narrated by the lost souls in the seventh layer of Hell. The delay effect is in full, um, effect here, as every single sound is looped and phased into and out of the mix with no real starting point or end point. We hear crashes that sound like the footsteps of Colossi; we hear Athena's running tap water; we hear the toys of petulant Cerberi; we hear the siren-screams of the dying Hydra. The sounds overwhelm, they envelop their listener, and the occasional hint of a human voice making its way into the mix only drives home that "Dream Catcher"'s brand of horror isn't as far away as our comfortable little lives would lead us to believe.
The other two extended tracks are strong as well, though not quite as epically memorable as "Dream Catcher". "Soul Catcher", despite its title's implied connection to "Dream Catcher", is actually quite subdued, starting on a low drone and finding vocals over a CB radio, eventually droning and clattering in ways that wouldn't have sounded all that out of place on early Delerium albums. "Vuls", which closes the album out with some of the only recognizable synth work (in the form of drone) on the album, is a quiet, meditative piece with the distant cacophony of voices unsettling the relative peace of the ice-smooth drone. It's a lovely way to finish a horrifying album.
And yes, it is horrifying, though the only thing that might make you think as much from my description thus far is the oppressive behemoth that is "Dream Catcher". Ah, you see, there are three more tracks, shorter ones, noisier ones, tracks on which Spybey is assisted by cEvin Key in a preview of what their Download project would become later that same year. "Vran" is tribal and noisy, three minutes of screeching, mechanical noise over the sort of clattering that a noisy Nurse With Wound song might employ (and an indiginous chant of some sort, added for effect). "Gessung" is more traditionally Spybey, but more dynamic, with backward-masked swooshes and lots of high-pitched whooshy noises going in all directions in the speakers. Finally, there's "Powerlang", which sounds like an utter mess clouding the attempts of some other, slightly more traditional instruments (a harmonica, an electric guitar) to make a mark in the dense mix. I think there's a galloping horse here, too. If Spybey by himself is a dark and mysterious sort of crazy, Spybey with Key is utterly batsh!t nuts.
In a way, the conflict between the two sides is the album's greatest downfall -- because of the longer pieces being broken up by a middle passage of noise, there's really no overlying mood to the album, robbing the album a bit of its feel as a single, complete unit. Still, the presence of those tracks gives us mixtape fodder for unsuspecting souls, not to mention a bit of catharsis amongst the mix. Still, it is Spybey's extended pieces that steal the show and make the more lasting impression, forcing us to notice just how much expertise he has at sustaining a mood for an extended amount of time. New Words Machine is not as accessible as more recent releases like Piss Frond and From Labrador to Madagascar, and it's not as dynamic as his work as a piece of Download. What it is, however, is a potent example of the possible range of ambience.
New Words Machine is the type of album that makes an awful lot of other "ambient" music sound a little bit contrived, a little bit, dare I say, boring. It's not perfect, but it is indeed rather extraordinary.
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