Conure "49 Minutes (Until Release)" CD
[Crunch Pod]
I haven't heard much from Conure, but this proper full-length is far different from my last exposure to the project. The sound quality is smoother and more polished, and bits and pieces of the sounds explored reference some of that earlier work, but the general aesthetic is certainly a change, as opener "An Exercise in Reverberation" is just that, as boring as it may seem: Four minutes and 17 seconds of percussive thuds that resonate with reverberating low-end textures. That's it. Then it's onto the nearly eight-minute "Manhattan State of Mind", which is at least a little more atmospheric in its use of faint, clouded samples underneath cascading ambient waves and glitchy electronics scattering back and forth in subdued movements - even if it is still rather one-sided for its duration. This approach continues in "A Manhattan Mindless State" as the samples become slightly more prominent and a little bit of faint distortion starts to seep in over some of the background sounds. Suddenly "Patience" kicks in with a throbbing beat that, while completely disparate to the preceding tracks, is oddly more effective - even if it does clash with my personal tastes. Three minutes in the beat starts to fade away as some strange musical surges enter the picture, quickly fading away as raw yet restrained distortion starts to take over in "Reflections and Recapitulation". The sinister ambience of the dense low-end hums and crisp, scratchy underpinnings in the significantly darker "Dreaming in Stereo" are the first elements that start to really suck me in, possessing a bit more feeling and intrigue than much of what precedes them, and some of those characteristics stick around in the shorter and more minimal "A Quiet Interlude" (which, like the opening track, boasts a title that's a little too literal). When "Scraping the Cavity" comes in with its harsher distorted textures and throbs to add yet another degree of menace, things start to sound a little more like what I was possibly expecting based on the "After They're Gone" release I had heard previously, and therefore this set of three tracks is a bit more interesting to me (Granted the loud, reverberated vocals/samples at the end totally ruin the atmosphere - I mean, what the hell is that, a cop yelling, "Drop it! Drop the knife, buddy!" or some shit?). "Recycled Lives" drops it way back down to a minimal drone which ebbs and flows in terms of volume and density for more than eight minutes before the two-part close, "An Exercise in Reversal/Final Release", sounds like it chaotically compresses the time span of prior content in reverse before coming to a close (and based on the title, one would assume that the physical act of the track ending is what makes up the "Final Release" portion of the track). The layout looks okay, but I actually like the back cover more than anything else. The color scheme and text arrangements of the booklet are just disinteresting to me, and overall it looks a little bland. But I guess that's my particular problem with this entire release: It's just too bland to hold my interest. Admittedly some of that has to be attributed to personal listening preferences, but beyond that I simply find the tracks to be too similar throughout their given running times, and the fact that they all join together seamlessly as one larger outing (referred to at one point on the packaging as "a composition in 11 parts") doesn't make a great deal of sense to me since there's not a ton of unification from start to finish - the pieces still feel like separate entities rather than parts of a larger whole. I don't know, I'm a little unsure of what to make of this one, but whatever the case, I wasn't particularly engaged by the material, so... (5/10)
Running time - 48:53, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: Dreaming in Stereo, A Quiet Interlude, Scraping the Cavity]
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