For the seventh outing in Drone Records‘ long-running Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone series of vinyl compilations, Specimens, Skeldos, Mytrip and Opening Performance Orchestra get not only a track on the LP, but for the first time in the collection, the latter also have the chance to offer up the full seventy-minute version of their contribution on an accompanying CD.
At ten minutes long, Skeldos’s “Byra” is at first apparently more drone-centric in the commonly understood meaning of the term, layers of monotonous sound underpinning a skyscraping fold of shimmering reverberations that speak volumes through volume and stereo placement. These fill the soundstage with an almost beatific contrast between apparent stasis and billowing trajectories that expand onwards with a time-dilating languor that is almost entirely suffused with meditative mellowness.
Mytrip continue this sensation on “Death Is My Heaven”, which is perhaps as paradisical in intent as the title might indicate. While Skeldos left rhythm to the imagination, on the flipside of the delightfully turquoise-coloured disc, Mytrip leaven their FX trails with an underlying pulsation, one that rumbles at the lower threshold, churning ominously and threatening to emerge in an overweening triumph of noise obliteration. They deploy field recordings in extensively distended form here. On “I Stood Still (Sinking)” too, the powers of digital manipulation offer glimpses of the source materials, but nothing more than a sneaking suspicion that the real world has been processed into oblivion and lies beyond definitive comprehension. Whether excerpted or at full length, Opening Performance Orchestra’s “Creeping Waves” is helped by a little bit of theory, which is worth repeating in full:According to the principle of diffraction, when a wave front passes an obstruction, it spreads out into the shadowed space. A creeping wave in electromagnetism or acoustics is the wave that is diffracted around the shadowed surface of a smooth body such as a sphere. Creeping waves greatly extend the ground wave propagation of long wavelength (low frequency) radio. They also cause both of a person’s ears to hear a sound, rather than only the ear on the side of the head facing the origin of the sound. In radar ranging, the creeping wave return appears to come from behind the target.
Anyone who has attended a live performance by SunnO))), Merzbow or Swans can probably recognise this description from experience, and the twelve-minute vinyl version demonstrates the above principles in a format that sounds not much like any of those three artists and/or ensembles, though Opening Performance Orchestra shared a split album with Masami Akita in 2018. Obviously best appreciated at loud volume or on headphones, the creeping waves do seem to insinuate themselves into every nook and cranny, hiding behind ears and flowing into brainstems as much as they fill the upper and lower audio reaches with a slow-burning edifice of somnolent slowness.
Given that Opening Performance Orchestra’s creeping waves fairly rapidly put time on hold, it’s arguable whether twelve or seventy minutes pass with the same sensation of temporal dilation. Once pulled into the weft and weave of the subtle shifts and panoramic evolutions, there seems to be no particular need to measure the passing of minutes, let alone seconds any more – though the longer version certainly puts that theory to the test, and then some.Once again, the most recent volume of Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone shows that there’s more to drones than simple monotony and unimaginative reverb pedal settings. As ever, Pete Greening‘s eyeball-bending op-art paintings adorning the sleeve are the perfect complement to another essential addition to the Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone oeuvre.
-Linus Tossio-
