Bonechurch - Blackstatic
This review blog ALSO works as a time machine, and at this time I will travel you all back to the year 2000. Before 9/11, Iphones, Facebook, Youtube etc. A time where we were forced to explore music-stores which sold official released Compact Discs via REAL record companies. But it was also the time where ordinary people could afford to buy a CD-burner (and CD-ROMs of course!). With that, you could launch your own home-made label company! A label like Machine Tribe Recordings releasing the Bonechurch debut called Blackstatic. Bonechurch sounds cool and bleak, and Blackstatic also sounds cool and bleak. Does the music from 2000 still sound cool and bleak?. Yup.
Bonechurch (like Mind of God) explores the bleak dub-inspired isolationist downtempo ambient-soundscapes of artists like Scorn, Siegwolf, Lull to the early stuff with Boards of Canada and Autechre. The stuff is pretty murky, monotonous, bleak and hypnotic... the kind of illbient being perfect to relax to!
The first piece drops you into a mystical post-industrial soundtrack wasteland. Primitive and icy sounds, deep machines roaring into oblivion with shamanic ritualistic touches here and there. Not that far away from Selected Ambient Work Vol.2 by Aphex Twin. Excellent start, but it should be longer. Next piece worth mentioning would be Grindspace, has the same intro as the first track (Blackstatic) but learns more into an almost paranormal ghostish setting. Perfect and cool downtempo trip-hop drums roll into the track (like it is just MEANT to BE there!), love the fxxxxxx eerie but groovy basslines and reverbed elements/effects work their way to enlighten the experience. REALLY dig the drums and the basslines sound like a thing between Boards of Canada and Scorn!. Think Scorn´s Gyral album and Boards of Canada Music Has The Right To Children.
Fifth track Low Hills, High mountains... Amazing. Could work in Twin Peaks if you ask me. Sloth-like drummings, deep church bells, angelic voices, acid-drenched effects, mystical piano-keys... Whole bloody thing is like a slimy sirup-like swamp, just sucking you in deeper and deeper. The following track View From a Chair just chills and scares you in almost 13 minutes, old-school industrial aesthetics meet up with icy illbient soundscapes. The album slows it down and grinds further and further into primitive and dark ambient soundscapes, well worth exploring if you ask me. Depressing material yes, but well made!.
Question is... Does Blackstatic stand against the cruel test of time?. It does in certain parts. The low-technical issues can be heard and felt, BUT!... Some of the great tracks REALLY lift the whole thing up, and the general succession of reaching that specific theme also makes it stand out. Kalteldur works like a time machine, and so does this... It sounds like something from its age, but it is STILL good!. Tired of new genre-fusion music beyond hipster land, try this for a size!
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