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 their wear. As it goes on, those groans fade and the track becomes perceptively quiet, now with the sound of barely putting engines and an oscillating sound resembling an alarm.   

“Republica Intelligensia” and “Kinetic Sanctions” bring back the bursts of cacophony with the former sustaining that aggressive cacophony through much of the track while keeping that sense of menace in the background. The former and final track begins with a burst and quickly fades back with a more subtle but tension filled low end. The evolution of this particular track brings in a bit of errant and erratic percussion, feeling something like mechanical whispers from a machine losing steam quickly as it disappears and gives way to a symphony of warbling and bleeping electronics. It’s rather surreal experience that has a nice aesthetic of a dying factory expending its last bit of energy to make symphony of itself.