Artist: Absolute Key
Album: Imploding Harmony
Year: 2024
Label: Bent Window Records
On repeated listens, the title "Imploding Harmony" seems more and more appropriate to describe the intimacy of Absolute Key's noise arrangements on the album. Each track offers a variety of textures within the song, and from track to track they're also quite different and offer their own surprises, revelations, and joys. On the whole I found the album "harmonious" (to adapt the title)--Absolute Key creates a balanced harsh noise environment, restrained and precise, with all excess trimmed away. I wouldn't call it minimalist, but there's a sense of selectiveness that gives the compositions a great sense of clarity and direction.
Describing the album, the artist says it "concentrates heavily on pure noise and industrial. Based on field recordings from different wastelands, this album is studying themes of decomposition and disintegration, be it gods, bodies, souls or machines." The sounds on "Imploding Harmony" putrefy back to their organic roots, industrial and electronic noise returning to nature.
In spite of the first track's title, "Destructive Axiom," there's actually a great deal of constructive sound-space, and I appreciate the environmental arrangement. Even at its climax, there's a sense of restraint, easing the listener into the sound-space and giving space to perceive the song's many textures and levels. I especially loved the ending, abrupt like a sudden gasp for air, bringing an almost human choral quality to the noise. And it kicks right in to my favorite song on the album.
I responded immediately to the soft fuzz and industrial beat that opens "Cracks in the Sky." Soothing edges of static subtly evolve through several movements, it has the arrangement and intimacy of a piano or string trio. Finely mixed, the song crescendos to a chainsaw-esque assault before migrating to a torrential whirlwind, and finally a solitary echo. Throughout all this, somehow Absolute Key manages to main the calm, steady pacing with which the song began. It's less frantic than the other tracks, and I appreciate the artist's patience.
In "Chant to the Other God," the most dystopic track on the album, harsh but delicate high frequencies contrast with discordant, siren-like blasts, like a warning before the noise destruction begins. That sort of intro invites a narrative interpretation. All the blips to me were like messages that couldn't be transcoded, a fury of signals coming in too fast for the machines to handle. Unlike the album's first two songs, there's more of an overwhelming sensibility to the noise arrangement here. The title suggests this is some sort of communication--but it is unknown whether the other party heard the communique, and if they did, whether it was even understood. The ending builds towards a great almost human sort of wailing--pain, worship, pleading, or perhaps on the other end, condemnation, or deliverance?
"Wayfarer" felt the most orchestral, offering a counterpoint of pitches, as if in dialog with one another, like ships lost in a fog, or radios unable to find the right frequency. The organ-y synth that builds in the background towards the end is a nice chance of pace, indicative of the sorts of surprises this almost holds, and how it introduces new songs rather than repeat itself, consistently inventive.
"Reclusion," the final song, is also the shortest. Its low end assault starts right away with rotary-like interruptions, laying a foundation of staccato static. I like the punchiness of this as a final track, it's pretty hardcore and slamming. Whereas the others seemed to evolve through the duration, this one starts where it ends and just keepings punching deeper and deeper into its own dark trenches. Definitely the grooviest track on the album.
CDs/Digital available from:
https://bentwindowrecords.bandcamp.com/album/imploding-harmony
https://absolutekey.bandcamp.com/
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