Al Margolis & Jeff Surak - Violet If
Released: October 1 On this collobaration, avant-garde experimenters Al Margolis and Jeff Surak get together to bring us a wide-ranging and bit unpredictable sonic delights. It opens up with a rush of wild cacophony on “Leviathan” only to gradually take us into much more quiet and even spooky territory. But even with its calmer moments, it maintains a sense of hostility, like walking into a large and unfurnished room with a single light source hanging from a thread. And it’s the more quiet and menacing tone that carries through much of the rest of the album as well, with few and far between rushes of noise. There’s a pervading sense in each track that there is a certain sparseness to the composition, which is a bit deceptive. There are those sparse moments peppered throughout, but there’s always a surprising amount of activity going on. “Enthymesis” plays on this sense well, starting with small groans of defunct machinery, near-dead pieces of industry that continue on despite thei...
