Genre: Experimental / Drone / Ambient

Tracklist:

01 Virginally Coquettish
02 Eaten by Neighbour Kids
03 The City of Old Hippie
04 Teenage Coma

I initially got the impression that I was about to be subjected to a whole cargo-load of cacophonous noise with this one, and that was in spite of it coming in a bright pea-green clamshell case covered with a sticker exuding a species of Jack and Jill childish innocence. Indeed there is noise here, but ultimately it’s a great deal more than that. Edward Sol is a sorcerer of sound, distorting, manipulating and stretching it, metamorphosing his material into new and unlikely forms, and giving them new voices. Quite literally, we are visitors to an entirely different world, where sound takes on a strange depth and tone emblematic and symbolic of alien dimensions.

What amazes me most about this style of music is that it constantly re-invents itself and sets forth new propositions in the process. To all intents and purposes one would have come to the conclusion that experimental music as an entity would be more of a bitter old man who’s had to endure endless reiterations and reincarnations, rather than the sprightly juveniles that this music displays and as portrayed on the sticker adorning the clamshell case. In fact, with the ever burgeoning catalogue of styles and genres now fragmenting the current musical landscape, I should think that fertile sonic hybridisation is more of a commonplace than ever. To take this present disc as a typical example, then that would indeed seem to be the case.

Four tracks, all adhering together via a common stylistic glue, yet simultaneously refusing to be bounded by any genre prescriptions. Smatterings of ambient ruminations, dance rhythms, electronic doodlings, grating ad-libbed noise, sound collage, field recordings and audio manipulations, even some post-rock guitar references on the final track, creating a series of disparate threads that are skilfully woven into a magnificently broad canvas, betraying a wide-ranging musical and intellectual curiosity that sees artificial borders as constituting unnatural (and unnecessary) constraints. And in spite of the intellectual underpinnings of these pieces, it’s not a dry or rarefied intellectualism that has the potential to alienate or create distance. I felt a warmth coming through in fact, a tongue-in-cheek humour even, vaguely present but still there. The important thing for me though here is the smoothness of composition – it all flows naturally and correctly, and that a strict evolutionary process of creation informs every microsecond of these pieces.

“Virginally Coquettish”, the opening track, will serve admirably to illustrate my point. Quietly emerging out of silence an ambient wavering is background to field recordings of crows and normal everyday noises, while random bangings and crashings litter the foreground. Suddenly a menagerie of electronic creatures bursts into song, with warblings, squeaks and screeches, and scratchings bringing the scene to life. Here, abruptly, what started out as something quite colourless, now startles and quickens the pace, filling the spaces with unbridled and untrammelled liveliness. Creatures of every hue and demeanour announce their existence, delighting and terrifying in equal measure. Added to that is a sense of myriad spaces, some close and personal, and others boundless and expansive. And yet, all this is compacted into just over five minutes of playing time.

After listening to many of the same ilk in my time, it was truly refreshing to listen to something that wasn’t afraid to stray outside of its own borders in the quest to find new and interesting territories. And in truth, what is contained in any new territory is the familiar in new and unfamiliar combinations. No doubt many real-world explorers would tell you this. “Before They Come and Slit my Throat” feels exactly the same, taking familiar and oft-heard elements and wrangling them into new contexts. While many would say that it’s been done many times before (something which is not to be disputed), what many such examples lack is a sense of playfulness and joy in pure unadulterated experimentation. In this case, though, I am happy to note that both of these elements are to be found here in abundance.