There Are No Birds Here/Isolated Community - We Are The Wreckage Of Our Former Selves

 

Released: December 6

Being familiar with both artists independently, I was curious to hear what the two electronic tinkerers would bring in a collaboration and it was quite intriguing. Going into the album pretty much blind, I expected something a bit ambient and maybe more on the drone side of things. And while there is some of that going on here, as a whole the album is quite noisy and erratic in a lot of ways. Nothing here happens at a particularly fast pace, but it all has a slow and seething quality to it, especially in manner of manipulation for the various found sounds implemented through the album. 

The album opener “Scrab” is a track that feels like a grab bag of odd sounds and textures that have been carefully and meticulously stretched and bent to fit together in a most uncomfortable manner. The intention of unease is clearly there as you hear random intermittent beeps, electronic screams, and this weird skittering sound that persistently occurs. It is the most uncomfortable part of all this as it feels like a rather large insect quickly moving back and forth in the stereo field. It is uncomfortable but it unmistakably catches the attention of your ear.

While the feeling of unease is persistent in the album, it also has its moments of such subtlety such as on “Nightfold,” where the creepy sound effects are at a minimum and we get a predominant and tense droning chord throughout. This feels a bit more akin to what I have heard from both artists previously but I still perceive a kind of shift in technique with an infusion of cinematic uncertainty. But my favorite moment comes right at the end with “Kenner.” It’s a track that seems to finally diffuse some of the tension that has built up over the rest of the album. It still has that slightly off kilter quality with its choice of tones, one of which sounds like a short little melody from a tape that plays along with a slide projector reel in the 70s or 80s. A brief, three note sound that is supposed to signal a change in the slide, here it simply repeats in an untimed and overlapping way. It feels like a rather eerie note to end the album on, but also a rather appropriate one.