Perhaps the most well known formulation
of Plato’s was his Allegory of the Cave, a dark and confined
interior space inhabited by a small group of chained prisoners
who spend their days watching the shadows cast by various out
of sight objects placed behind them. Interpreted as a warning
against taking our sensory perceptions as indicative of the reality
of the world as it is in itself, the Allegory has been celebrated
for having had a profound influence on philosophical thought for
over two thousand years.
But it also seems as though the musical
world has been deeply moved by the tale of the Cave, or at least
Aughra (also known as Brent Eyestone of Forensics and Corn on
Macabre) has, for with his first full-length LP ‘Proof of
Dark Matter | Light the Lights’, he has recorded an album
that concerns itself with the ethereal traces of life, love and
reality. Over the course of nine tracks, or ten with the CD version
of the album, he paints a stark landscape of distant echoes, cosmic
howls and ghostly static fuzz, an ambient wasteland over which
monumental electronic drones and the occasional vaporous guitar
hauntingly loom in and out of our bewildered consciousnesses.
Intriguingly the album begins on a remarkably
sanguine note with ‘Et in Arcadia Ego,’ a track in
which a glacial wave of heavily processed guitar rises in intensity
to fill the speakers and a hopeful bass line dances blithely in
its undercurrent. The piece truly sounds like a birth, full of
optimism and euphoria, so it comes as mild culture shock to hear
its immediate successor, ‘The Warmth of the Shallows,’
take a sudden u-turn into the bleak and desolate sounds of abandoned
space. From this transformation the rest of the album follows
suit, and Aughra employs his talent for ambient electronica to
afford us an obscured glimpse of incomprehensible transmissions
from long evacuated space stations (‘There is Nothing Tender
in My Resignation’), trudges through snowy industrial ruins
(‘And the Decision to Eviscerate’), and the Heavens
turning to violence (‘Peers Become Prey’).
‘Proof of Dark Matter’ does
finish with something that could be construed as relatively positive,
but like the album as a whole, ‘Ode on An Urn’ begins
in the hope of transcendence, with its reverb-laden and uplifting
piano, only to prematurely collapse as if under the weight of
its own expectations. But don’t let this put you off; if
you have a taste for evocative ambient electronica peppered by
indie that sounds as if it was recorded in a black hole, then
‘Proof of Dark Matter’ is a work you should definitely
delve into. With it, Aughra has created the kind of music that
stays with you long after you’ve finished listening, lingering
in your unconscious and subtly colouring your view of the world,
undetected, like the dark matter of which the album is undoubtedly
the proof. (Simon Chandler)
For
fans of: Auburn Lull, The Asuza Plane, Windsor for the Derby,
Aphex Twin, Mogwai
|
