Distant Animals - Everyday Violence

Distant Animals

Everyday Violence

Germany  Engram Recordings  ER34  DL  (2020)

An ep length chunk of analogue synthesis in the form of three pieces each roughly six and a half minutes in duration from this Lewes in Sussex-based creator, Daniel Alexander Hignell.

Minimal opener New Youth opens up creases in the crumpled space-time continuum.  Buried below the surface humus are noises computers made in the 1970s, whirring as nebula fly by and the back of your head sinks almost imperceptibly into the moistening peat as the heavens open once again.  There are hints at waves of hidden meaning; Distant Animals work with subsonic and ultrasonic composition, probably.  How is it made?  Perhaps with the corpulently flightcased modular synthesiser apparatus he used at an Aural Detritus concert in Brighton in 2016 likely in combination with nefarious dark-web music software in new and unexpected ways?  Toward the end of the piece I can discern a kind of bit-crushed house rhythm or sped-up dub techno pulse; out of sorts with my expectation of the track.  Good.

L’histoire annotee des processus emergents (or The Annotated History of Emerging Processes)

Analogue bubbling, network machine-room cooling systems breath deeply.  Emergency neon.  A distillation of sci-fi movie soundtrack opulence.  Tones emerge and disappear for maximum headphone joy.  Like a bubbling tarpit.  Chunky.

All three pieces seem to be built out of sounds that exist on the very edge of human auditory range, so the music seems to be quiet; and the third piece, Everyday Violence exists within the listener’s particular physical environment and influences and is influenced by it in turn.  Separate listens at different volume settings have yielded very different experiences for me.  Today, at a reasonable volume, I’m listening to the beginning of this piece merge with the regular pulse of the neighbours’ builder’s cement mixer outside, whereas I was aware of a more pronounced high-end detail in this piece late last night at a more modest amplitude.  Synthesiser drone emerge presently to delineate the overall structure.  The piece ends with a crescendo which is cleverly emphasised by the relatively low perceived volume of the majority of the material.  It benefits from the extra emphasis after the close listening demanded by the preceding majority of the work.  

Also see his Death Keeps Me Awake from 2019 also on Engram, Lines and Weaves / Threads on Hallow Ground from 2018 and 2019 respectively.

Engram is based in Berlin, the spiritual home of forward-looking electronic music.  So far, in this year’s batch of releases are: a one minute and five second track from Male Dynamics, an album of pretty electronica from Oriental Love, an album from Adam Majdecki-Janicki that features a track superbly titled “This Planet Is A Penal Colony And Nobody Is Allowed To Leave”, post-harsh noise from MMRK, Yang Liu’s piano movement Rain Air II and a sonified sense of nostalgia by Hsiao Li Chi among other intriguing things.

Clearly they take their mission statement “N. Senada's "Theory of Obscurity" states that an artist can only produce pure art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken into consideration” very seriously.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, as Wikipedia states; “There is a debate as to whether or not Senada actually existed, or was simply an invention of [the band] The Residents”.  Despite this, the label is absolutely worth your time exploring.

https://engramrecordings.bandcamp.com/