[Reviewed by: Iaha Crax]
For many of us people of the present, the mystery of the self or the mystical sense of god has been revealed as a search with the intention of unraveling the mechanisms of the physical cosmos, or even the internal organs. Interestingly enough, the imagery of these ambivalent aspects is essentially identical. The music of EWT 811 is an endeavor to such a journey through the coloristic manifestation of cosmography. Putting science apart, the cosmos is still a matter of descriptive style and psychological approach for those still humble enough to acknowledge it. This record is worked out on sharp frequencies of electronics. There are many layers finely arranged into soft circular sounds as in the first track, or in massive packages of stabbing ambient as in the second track. Note that there are no track titles, giving us the opportunity to freely interpret their ambiances.
Musically, there is a certain know-how in the compositions along with very inspiring narrative moments that imprint every song with a personal artistic touch. This should be no surprise, because EWT 811 is a project of Anthony Armageddon Destroyer, that has released effective albums under Paranoia Inducta. This time, the Polish sound designer displays his abilities on very soft and subtle ambient tones constructed from space and industrial noises. The result is simply hyper-realistic, such as on the third track which suggests an engine object finding its course in vast space, or the next one where voices from space missions are gathered into a menacing speech.
In fact, we are informed that the record is built from original sounds only. The composer collected sounds transmitted by celestial bodies or radio signals and found a successful formula to give them life. He knows the mysterious word to resurrect this golem of noises.
For instance, the harassing rumbling of the fifth track that could be the distant echo of a supernova is juxtaposed with a pulsar-like flickering going on until exhaustion. This minimal ambient, in terms of pitch and downtuned frequencies, is kept all along the record. Anthony A.D. doesn’t change the tempo, but keeps instead to a certain highly expressive monotony best noticed in the sixth tune or on throughout the seventh where sounds are allegedly answering one another in a nicely arranged synchronicity.
The effect of color on sound and vice versa plays an interesting role here – as is known space is overabundant with spectacular spectrums. Every track possesses a personal radiance mostly infected with dark grey spots and the fearsome, nuanced darkness of the vast cosmos. The eighth song even fabricates a correspondent sound-color material suggesting multiple sensations at the same time, while the next track regains that sense of absorbing unicolor and unisound desperation born out of the absence of horizon.
For besides this uncanny panorama for human perception, the cosmos breeds madness. Confronted with a limitless display of space, the human mind is forced to step out of its boundaries. Maybe such a strange feeling is expressed with the ninth track: minimal acoustics leading to nowhere, with no other destination but the linear vertigo of our perception. Or the suggestion of an intent of communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence found on the tenth track; and on the eleventh even a sensation of nihilistic abandonment in front of the cosmos’ refusal to respond.
Like Paranoia Inducta, EWT 811 is released through Beast of Prey in a splendid handmade edition with a suggestive digipak completed with a Micro Memory Stick M2 (+USB) and containing a video performance with static cosmographies for the final track. I believe these cosmos recordings are an achieved response to the field recordings ambient treatments we are so used to. I am even dreaming about future ambient musicians going in space for the only purpose of capturing such mysterious sounds. Anthony Armageddon Destroyer is undoubtedly one of the first of these sound-travellers.
EWT 811 – B0833-45
Beast Of Prey, BOP 7.6
Memory Stick/Digital 2012
Santa Sangre 