John Mingay & Adam Sykes – Shattered
– CDr/Download – Iris Light – 2024
https://irislight.bandcamp.com/album/shattered
1. An Infinity Not Once Absent.
2. Stillness Sculpts A Roar.
3. Tempo Cast Beyond Tone.
4. A Waiting Torrent.
5. Confusion Befalls Change.
6. Unspoken Shadow.
7. Every Being Slashes and Blinds.
8. We Imagine Merely What We Miss.
9. Shrouded Fallow Gone. Tattered Remains
Fall.
10. Among the Voodoo of Symbols.
11. Mortality Breathes Hard.
John Mingay and Adam Sykes are no
strangers to this site, both artists have had their work reviewed on here,
before.
Shattered is made from a whole lot of Mingay
and Sykes adjusting each others work on the tracks and titles. It presents as one,
long dark, hostile and threatening album from the inset. The work puts me into a
variety of altered sonic landscapes and strange dreams, in fact this could
serve as a soundtrack to the odd dreams that have occupied my sleep of late. Areas
of the work feel like bad weather, feeling like storms brewing, rain falling and
winter soon arriving. At other times it feels like a tunnel of nocturnal consciousness
taking the listener on a dark journey. This also has many moments of beauty that
appear within the work such as tracks like Stillness Sculpts a Roar or Unspoken
Shadow. The mix is loud and clear, projecting the work well, emphasising shifts
within tracks to highlight individual noises and passages of different tracks –
Stillness Sculpts a Roar is a perfect example of this. The language of
the work can shift dramatically from sparse with a few noises and instruments and
it can progress to become busy with more sounds and metal being hit to resonate
for long periods of time. Sometimes the clanging feels like nightmarish church
bells singing their song over the endless nightmare of drones particularly on Confusion
Befalls Change. These parts can also feel like sounds from decades ago, nightmarish
and strange, dragging us across different times.
This is a long, very effective (and in parts
beautiful) Industrial, Dark Ambient album that delivers good, clear work through
impressive, gradual creation and excellent production. Shattered is well worth
buying, the link to the work is above.
ZG 2026