CD, .Angle.Rec., 2007
www.angle-rec.net
Limited to 404 copies, ANGLE.REC. present this, a concept album born from machines, delivered through the digital experiments of Flint Glass and the analog field investigations of Telepherique, exploring the proliferation of information and the dangerous age it heralds. For 62 minutes, they journey through their machines into the belly of the beast, passing beyond the known mechanical interfaces into the cold, vast spaces beyond, charting new binary seas and galaxies as the dataverse blossoms and implodes.
“Kunsthirn” and “Dendral” set the primal scene as the information slithers into being amid gentle waves of ECG-like beeps, hard and floppy drive access noises, dial tones and deep whirs and bass pulses. The heart beats, ready to face the “Future Shock Syndrome”, as the textures thicken, layer upon layer, struggling to impose order upon the chaos of international voices as harsh sonics sputter into an embryonic rhythm. This finds its feet in “User Protection” as a slow beat pulses out a slave’s details – tied to the oar, the human rows to the beat of the information that dominates him, travelling through the harsh waves of “Dominance of Digital” to arrive, with a cavernous wail, at their destination. Here, broken and beaten, the slaves suffer the final stages of the “Information Burn-Out” as a simple, hypnotic, Morse melody weaves around the ebb and flow of a beating tribal rhythm.
The next stage of the journey reveals the true face of the information giga-bête as it conglomerates from the harsh, technoid beats of the “Magnetic Migration” before, with Lizard King swagger, it reaches adolescence in the narcotic fugue of “Fear of Information”. The fear reaches maturity alongside the information in the album’s musical apex – “Terror of Terabytes”. Here, a simple three-note melody echoes from the sonic debris before harsh robotic fists squash it out, pounding a boxy, industrial sequence. Deep sinister tones ring around the rattling machine squeals, revealing a full, rich sound that engulfs the listener. The final tracks, leading to “Internet Collapse”, show the final stages of war between flesh and data as the sonic palette is remapped to illustrate a fight for life – or perhaps, an escape – as a punchy beat forces its way through the mass of squeals, whirs and buzzes we hear every day from our beloved machineries. And so, the cycle ends.
Is this journey for you? Perhaps. Be aware that these tracks are not songs, these are sounds of electronic world amplified and overlaid until they create a tapestry of ones and zeros. When they find the rhythm to create structure, it is as much through randomness – the ghost in the machine – as it is through design.
[7/10]
— Christopher Fry