Label: Korm Plastics Format: CD
Jonathan Coleclough has been a musical associate of such soundscrapers as Organum and Colin Potter, and Windlass is his first CD beyond a limited edition release on Robot Records. The album makes extensive use of Ambient drones to darkling effect, and has all the spectral hallmarks of the chilly wastes of post-Industrial head music.
The welling bass tones lurk in murky, but warm, depths as an ominous undertow; it’s the mid-range and trebly organ parts which contain the sinister slo-mo dread of horripilation, creeping slyly under the skin to make it crawl with building tension. A mood piece of a single forty-minute tack, Windlass fits easily into the environment, making its presence felt almost rather than heard. There are sampled (or synthetic?) bird calls, extended chimes and fizzing static, low rhythmic wavers in the bass flow and other such developments to maintain the organic texture of the piece — Coleclough is more out to unsettle then lull into moments of relaxation than he is to scare.
Once again, volume is the key to the mood created by listening to this record — at low level it’s a background chill-out for more contemplative moments — at higher margins, the boom and drone becomes all-encompassing, even threatening, and not just to glasses or the position of small objects in the vicinity of the speakers…
-Antron S. Meister-
