MACHINIST | VIENS AVEC MOI DANS LE VIDE
CD, Betontoon

This CD-r's artwork is basically a translucent grey mist in a jewel case, and it couldn't be more fitting artwork for such a bleak piece of music. The 5 untitled, long tracks of industrial drone manage to cover a surprisingly wide range of dark soundscapes, suggesting a bleak, yet somehow beautiful world.
The disc starts with a low rumble, ambient synths, and plenty of metallic clanging and scraping in the background. The rumble/hiss gets gradually louder, and is eventually combined with some droning guitar reminiscent of Sunn O))). It peaks around the nine minute mark with a horrifying hiss; it's not overtly harsh or jarring the way you might expect harsh noise to be, but the way it builds and forms would be enough to scare the crap out of most people.
The second track is entirely different, starting with some heavily reverbed acoustic guitar amidst more rumbling and knocking. A wistful tone that almost even sounds like it might be a pedal steel plays softly, along with what almost sounds like a cricket or some sort of similar insect. A bit more rumbling and distortion gradually occur, but the almost-melody doesn't quite go away. The third track starts with more rumbling and slow melodic tones, but also adds some heavily delayed violin notes. A French voice starts speaking after 3 minutes, after which things get a lot more tense and the sounds of automatic machine guns are heard in the distance. These actually manage to form some sort of not-quite-rhythm, or at least try to.
Track 4 has a bit less going on than the others, it takes a long while to build without as many changes but features some more banging and scraping sounds that sort of manage to coalesce into some sort of rhythm. The final track is the longest at 20 minutes, and features even less going on; some slow banging in the distance, but plenty of dark shifting tones.
I've really been enjoying this disc; it's truly a dark, fascinating depiction of a dystopian world that somehow seems quite realistic.

8/10 -- Paul Simpson (30 June, 2010).

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