If you’re up for The Books, Four Tet, Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, and Matmos, Erik Nilsson’s music could be your cup of tea. Nilsson’s subtle and efficient guitar playing and discreet electronic instrumentation, composing and performing mixing live instruments and field recordings is quite gorgeous.
Deeply rooted in the soul of North Wales, (For Now We See) Through A Glass Dimly echoes and reverberates in and around the nestled villages, working its way through the tiny, crooked streams and the gently stirring brooks of shallow water. Past the twisted knots of the branches, so like a tangling of auburn hair, the music gently progresses into the woods. Musically vibrant, muscularly strong and fit, the music has a fiery power in its stirring string sections, which dynamically rise and then forge ahead like a thousand soldiers consumed in battle, as fierce as the flames of a dragon as its forks streak across the setting sun, matching up with the orb’s blood-orange colour, emerging from a time out of mind.
The Extent of Damage holds five tracks of atmospheric, instrumental music. Except the title track, “The Extent of Damage” (3:55) the rest of the songs are long-stretched compositions. The opening “Necro” is a slow-floating, cinematic piece with several crescendos and decrescendos in it.
The music of Antonymes (Ian M. Hazeldine) has always reverberated with an inherent sadness, graced by a tinge of holiness. On his newest effort, this yearning tone is reflected by the title, a reference to the 13th Chapter of Corinthians: for now we see through a glass dimly, but then face to face. The passage refers to the sea of the unknown: questions unanswered, secrets unrevealed. An alternate translation reads a mirror darkly, referring to the imperfect, oxidized images of ancient glass. In short: if we cannot see ourselves clearly, how shall we manage to grasp the eternal?
What’s going on inside all those disc drives, cellphones and computers? We’ve grown accustomed to obvious sounds: the whirr of a burning disc, the start-ups and shut-downs, the overheating hum of internal fans. But what about all the data stored, trashed and seemingly lost? Detectives are able to recover data from hard drives, and even the Internet seems to keep a copy, as those who have tried to delete incriminating emails have discovered. Digital footprints are nearly impervious to destruction, as Markus Mehr demonstrates via sharp amplification. His induction microphones ferret out the hidden and over-written, exposing – and perhaps indicting – humanity’s newest enduring mark.
