Here we have 13 untitled tracks of fairly quiet, very glitchy experimental noise with ambient undercurrents from Cordell Klier, perhaps better known for his work with Vedisni and Kreptkrept. The first thing I noticed about this disc was that I had to crank the volume up quite a bit compared to most CD's, even in headphones, in order to start to hear all of the layers. The songs tend to be based around lightly distorted cutups and glitches (often rhythmically arranged) and smooth ambient undercurrents that add darker textures, along with the occasional manipulated vocal sample here and there. It's really quite nice, though I find the brooding ambient rumbles, hums, and drones employed to be of a bit more interest than the scattered textures that litter the higher-range of the compositions. I definitely enjoy the tracks that bring in samples, a heavy bass presence, and a little bit of rhythm more than the somewhat haphazardly arranged pieces. There aren't any particularly bad tracks, it just gets old after about 20 minutes. The recording quality is actually excellent, my only complaint is that the CD should be consistently louder, and I feel that the foreground and background tones should be mixed together a bit more. There's a lot of imbalance in the volume levels of the different layers and aspects of the tracks, so it can be annoying when there's one little blip or segment that blows your ears out amidst a lengthy stream of relatively calm/quiet sounds. The CD comes in a matte digiack with a very consistent color scheme/layout that seems to use manipulated images of clear plastic CD cases and things like that to create unusual and not exactly recognizable layered images. Minimal text is used, just a few brief credits and thanks, and a couple of quotes regarding apparitions and the sensing of immaterial presences (which rest underneath the disc itself). In all honesty, I think that this material would be better suited for a 7" EP or perhaps a brief 10". 40+ minutes of this kind of thing can become tiresome, especially since there's nothing here that particularly dictates any thoughts or ideas that have gone into the recordings, and, let's be honest, most of these tracks do sound fairly similar to one another in both structure and tone. Sure, there are some standout moments, but like I said... an EP would be a more suitable format.
[Ad Noiseam]
Running time - 43:46, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: all are untitled]
Ad Noiseam - http://www.adnoiseam.net
