CD, Lagunamuch Community, 2007
www.nightech.org
Nightech originates from a remote mining and industrial city located somewhere in the eastern foothills of the Ural mountains, deep within Russian territory and on the fringes of vast areas of trackless Siberian land. The heavy metals that drive the local economy, combined with visions of the limitless encompassing emptiness, provide what I imagine to be the inspiration behind the dark ambient and machined drones found on “Deviation.” Metaphors of deep space and distances of countless uninhabited light years can be readily offered as the best descriptors of Nightech’s evocative and diligently textured sound. At one hour long, the collective thirteen tracks on “Deviation” are the restless dreams of a lonely cosmonaut who has faced the void, only to return forever haunted.
Affiliated with the Russian Lagunamuch community of abstract and ambient electronic artists, Nightech confronts us with the otherworldly vastness of the cold and empty reaches between the stars. Bleak drones and sinister reverberations characterize these tracks, which generally range between four and six minutes in length. Although this seems somewhat brief for drone-oriented music, “Deviation” is nevertheless able to effectively capture themes of extraterrestrial worlds and the timelessness of outer space within these compact modules of sound. The rumbling vastness of sound is often redolent of both organ pipes and rushing air alike, with an undulating quality that suggests infinitesimal movement against a background of overwhelming blackness.
There is progression evident here, among the humming of radio arrays and billowing nebulae, though when heard at length much of “Deviation” appears indistinguishable from the rest. Of course drone-work is more about subtlety and atmosphere than pursuing true differentiation, however it remains difficult to reconcile the fact that Nightech leaves little room for surprises. Each section of “Deviation” could be expanded to form a lengthy and perplexing dark ambient meditation, yet instead each remains bounded in its isolated capsule of vacuum.
[7/10]
— Dutton Hauhart