Album: Bruma
Artist: Line Spectrum
Label: Glacial Movements Records
Catalogue no: GM038
Tracklist:
1. A
Set of Events at the Shore
2. Fabric
Merge
3. Ways
4. Fluidity
5. Quietness
Italian label Glacial
Movements Records have consistently released some prime examples of glacial
ambient for over ten years now, and this latest recording from Ukrainian artist
Oleg Puzan, working under the project title of Line Spectrum, only confirms
that Alessandro Tedeschi knows what he’s about when it comes to picking the
good stuff. Puzan deftly creates some cold, unreachable atmospherics,
especially emphasising an element of these icy areas of the world that’s
sometimes missing from glacial ambient: the indescribable and ineffable
distance in time and space, and experience, that these isolated places
represent. Imagination sometimes simply isn’t enough to encompass the reality
of the Arctic/Antarctic regions. When I see a photo or video of a landscape
belonging to either of these places, I imagine huge stretches of geography
cocooned in vast silences.
But, like Bruma delineates, it isn’t like this at
all. Beneath the seeming quietude, at frequencies below human threshold, there
are tiny glitches and hums indicative of constant movement. These two
ice-masses are continually communicating in a language that we humans barely
understand (our current knowledge would be akin to knowing how to say ‘hello’,
‘goodbye’, ‘please’, and ‘thank you’ in any non-native language). Right from
the outset of ‘A Set of Events on the Shore’, amidst the predominant sounds of
waves lapping a shoreline, winds, crackling glitches, deep seismic rumbles, and
a persistent electronic whine alert the listener to the activity that goes on
without our ever noticing. Expressing it in this way underscores the feeling
that these are alien environments, domains where humans may feel unsettled or
out of place.
‘Fabric Merge’ explores
the theme further, beginning with hissing glitchiness under a crackling slab of
grainy noise, accompanied once again with seismic movements and a whirring
whine that snakes its way into one’s consciousness. It’s like mammoth chunks of
ice shearing away, ice floes riding unseen oceanic currents, or subtle shifts
in the mass beneath our feet. All the while winds whip around the body that, allied
to the freezing cold, hampers movement and makes even the most minor action a
struggle. ‘Ways’ only increases the sense of cold and isolation, spectral winds
barrelling and roaring through bizarre tunnels carved out by nature, as is its
wont, sounding like massive airways, perhaps supplying air to the lungs of the
place’s ecosystem. ‘Fluidity’ begins with quiet low bass air currents, until
bubbling water supersedes, a reminder perhaps that this whole ecosystem is
composed of the liquid in solid form, and in that lies its hidden strength. If
it were to melt for some reason…
And now we come to what
is probably the heart of the ice-engulfed lands capping the north and south
poles – the sheer ‘Quietness’ that exists here. Yes, there are still those
minute cracks, drones, and whines of activity going on (along with a ghostly
voice) but on a much smaller scale, perhaps because we are standing at its
centre, the axis about which everything revolves. Whichever way you stand, you
are looking south/north depending on your location. From here you can only go
down or up. It must be an eerie experience to know that when you are, indeed,
standing at either the north or south poles.
Full of cold,
isolationist, and freezing glacial ambient, it is nevertheless a paean to a
side of these two regions we don’t often think about. The notion that silence
possesses weight, a physical presence that can be felt, that can be interpreted
as either welcoming or oppressive, or indeed both simultaneously in a weird
kind of Schrödingerian fashion. It’s almost as if by freezing the land and
water, sound has also been frozen and left hanging. Above all else, I felt a
deep solitude, a detachment and displacement, as if I was no longer part of the
world. And, knowing of my own predilection for remote parts of the world, it
sang to my soul. And that’s a strange feeling to experience whilst sitting in a
warm room in a temperate zone.
Out now, available as a
download and CD in 6-panel digipak with special finish in an edition of 200. If
you, like me, prefer your ambient cold, distant, and quietly but massively
expressive, then I suggest you purchase from either Glacial Movements Records:
Or via Bandcamp:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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