For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001

Dadavistic Orchestra (The Black Dog + Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia)

http://www.dadavisticorchestra.com/

The second in a three-part series of a collaboration between The Black Dog and members of The Psychick Warriors of Gaia, Dokument.02 is about as gripping a release as they come. It's hard not to feel shaken after immersing yourself in it for an hour. Taking obvious inspiration from the Dada art movement—from the Man Ray-inspired cover art of the first to the ambient industrial anti-aesthetics of the second—02 holds a deep fury in its soundscapes.

It's not theoretical per se. It's physical: A sub bass rumbles ominously underneath a lot of the album. The deeply unsettling emotions carried by what's on top are more remarkable, though. Most of the time, it's bleak and desolate—"Teh Meh, Teh Me"—or else it's steeped in melancholy—the chords at the beginning of "Unconcerned" or the fractured ribbon of sound that glides over the second half of "De Neerstorting."

There are deep and warm textures that—while not exactly comforting—you'll still want to sink into. "De Kunst" is a masterful shifting miasma, with hints of joy, desperation and emptiness. A faint, indecipherable announcer is intermingled throughout, like a ticket conductor on a train to nowhere. At the end of "Unconcerned" unbearably searing knife-edge feedback suggests ferocious attack. Then sometimes, like in "Petrichore," the pads bliss out, as if we're being bathed in transcendental hyper-consciousness.

The group have adopted a sample editing style analagous to the Scotch Art process used by Gil J Wolman, where bands of printed matter were cut and repositioned in layers. Which means that, for an hour of "ambience," it's actually quite busy. Dokument.02 is not a passive album: It's a slow, dark torrent that wrenches you along with it.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=9403