Empty Value - Treatise on Absence

 

Released: August 23

Something that I really appreciated about this five piece noise suite is how quietly it opens up. The first track in this album, “World as a disease” is by no means a smooth experience, but it does have this quietly seething quality to it. It never gets particularly loud, yet it remains palpably aggressive in its presentation as it subtly grinds away. It flows into the next track quite well, as the next seems to represent an escalation in intensity and volume while still maintaining that soft seethe. As the albums progresses this way, with each track harsher than the next, it takes on this dynamic of a slowly growing fire that slowly takes in more fuel as each track adds more intensity. 

By the final two tracks, the field of sound has intensified into true walls of noise. “When I was a child I wished to be there forever” sounds like a static air raid siren, one that doesn’t waver or falter at any point, just hang there in the air as the growling noise around it shifts subtly. But “Words miss the point entirely” feels like a true evolution of what we have heard up to this point, while the track preceding it feels like a detour. The accumulation of noise reaches a zenith here and the various slow quiet grindings and clippings of the first three tracks are melded together in a scathing combination. It’s scratchy, it’s grinding, it’s chipping, and it’s at all the right intensities. It’s makes for the most etching finale to this vaguely depressing but captivating noise experience.