Illusion of Safety & Z’ev: s/t (No Part Of It, 2022)

October 13, 2022 at 6:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Illusion of Safety & Z’ev: s/t

This long-completed collaboration between two noise/experimental legends is finally going to see a physical release this year, thanks to No Part Of It and a huge list of other labels. The album was reportedly finished in 2008, before Daniel Burke retired Illusion of Safety for several years (the project is now active again), and Z’ev died in 2017. It contains two side-long tracks which focus on metallic percussive drone. Much of “A Strategy of Transformation” sounds like a giant dome-sized cymbal being continuously struck, with crunching static and captured voices making appearances at unexpected moments. There’s some violent crashing near the beginning, as well as some alarming electric interruptions. The dome-drone disappears before the final four minutes, and after it all goes still, fragments of intimate guitar notes emerge from several different angles, becoming iced over with electronic textures and interrupted by more crashes. “Smaller Revolutions” also sweeps intimate sounds into a whirlwind, simultaneously creating a stretched, distant, heavy blur and more detailed, microscopic movements. After a brief chorus of natural sounds, a more chaotic moment happens during the last five minutes, as signals scramble, waves collide, and more metal crashes to the floor, ending this mesmerizing collaboration with an apocalyptic peak.

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The Answer Is In The Beat