The ringing of the bells and the long carrier tone that eventually emerges beneath it signals the beginning of a descent into the underworld. Two tracks on each side carry me down an icy river of song. The ingredients are minimal, but a good cook can do a lot with just a few things, and I never felt heavy or gross from a cluttered presentation or an over-saturation of fatty content. This sonic fuel burns clean. And like any good meal the nourishment derived from the listening experience strengthened my nervous system, while none-the-less tuning it to alien frequencies. Here is an example of automatic music, and the methodology produces similar unconscious material as that evoked in automatic writing. It all makes for a fascinating foray into electronica as prepared by such experienced exemplars of the craft as Drew McDowall and Tres Warren.
I’m sure there are psychic messages contained in the coiling grooves of this clear vinyl LP. Being of a transparent nature they seep into my brain in slow trickle of melting tones a little over a half hour long. Yet that time stretches out and dilates in strange ways. The clock keeps ticking but my subjective experience of it is wobbly. I find myself looking for landmarks in “A Terrain of Constant-Low Intensity” and it is in this piece that I find most of them. The steady rhythm of bells starts out fast. Then, as the warm fuzz of an over-driven tube amp drone comes along, sound events slow down, moving into the supreme moment of kairos. And to me, this is what all excellent music will do: take me out of myself and the concerns of my daily trivial mind and into a moment of emergence where the deeper strains of true thought live. Again, this is akin to automatic writing in the way a steady stream is brought forth from deep chthonic currents.
