Label: Soleilmoon Format: CD
When not making up a sizeable chunk of the musical bedrock of The Legendary Pink Dots, and surprisingly unprolific in his solo work by the standards of that group, Phil Knight has been known to settle down to produce some stunningly hypnotic recordings in his time. Following on from the hypnagogic Dreamcell of the early Nineties, Silvermandalas opens with an untitled track which shows a fascination for the watery sound of an electric organ in the midst of a rising and fading wash of distended drums and restrained electronic noise. As is to be expected, there’s a cyclical feel to the album, as loops are rearranged, entwined and revolved into complex patterns which frequently end at a strangely distant, but connected, point from their origins.
Sharing the same headspace as both Rolf Dammers and Holger Czukay‘s Canaxis and the more reflective work of Coil (particularly “Is Suicide A Solution”), the second track is a concoction of drifting, half-human voice loops and snatched telephone conversation, making a particularly disorienting piece of atmospheric ellipsis. The album is replete with the hypnotic possibilities of varied repetition, taking minimal structures and turning them into elongated variations on themselves – the simple tones of mysteriously-derived samples and synthesizer sounds assume a crystalline avian quality as a subtle bass presence makes itself known; an attenuated tribal rhythm coalesces into the virtual sounds of impossible electronic near-wildlife; a drone meets another as a reeded instrument sings to itself before arrival of a phasing pulse-beat – there’s an underlying feeling of the ritually paranormal about Silvermandalas, though never so gauche as to be New Age, and too unsettling to be entirely Ambient.
By composing deeply mediatative music which draws inward before exploring outwards into the realms of minimal psychedelic trance Electronica, Knight has made a record which justifies its title – when the end finally comes in a whirl of violins, rolling bleeps and gentle propulsive rhythm, it’s the culmination of a transfixing listen, like watching ripples from a skimmed pebble which has disturbed the distended reflections of a smooth sheet of water. Zen-like in its semi-transparency, Silvermandalas is the ideal accompaniment to the half-sleeping state which, in some theories of parapsychology, is when the incubi and succubi of the subconscious can manifest themselves in modern minds as extraterrestrials. With the help of this record, they can have a far better soundtrack than the usual spooky-orchestral clichés they’ve suffered from over the years.
-Antron S. Meister-
