Performing alongside someone like Boyd Rice, one of music’s most notorious provocateurs, must have quite a damaging effect. I mean, you’re dealing with a man whose famous for not only unleashing upon the world the menacing music of
Non, but also for such disparate oddities as owning a colossal Barbie doll collection and being close friends with the Black Pope himself. However, Robert Turman, revered multi-instrumentalist and second member of Non, seems to have left his collaborations with Rice unscathed. Even decades after Turman’s departure from Non, he continues to develop his own identity and art. From the dark and menacing dance tracks of his 1987 solo effort Way Down, to the cold and sterile ambience of his 2009 split with Wolf Eyes’ Aaron Dilloway Blizzard, Robert Turman is one of the most underrated figures to come out of industrial music’s earliest days.
To shed light on his too often forgotten legacy, Spectrum Spools has taken out of the closet, and shaken the dust off one of Turman’s earliest solo works, Flux (1981). What listeners will discover from this lost treasure is a delicate sonic sculpture, six sprawling tracks that combine classical minimalism with processed loop-dissections. An album of sparse and engaging beauty. Several of the tracks ooze a distinctly Eastern vibe, like the droning kalimbas of ‘Flux 1’ or the exotic pianos of ‘Flux 3.’ Others wash over your ears as if relics from a time long gone, like the interweaving Satie-like pianos of ‘Flux 4’ or the odd, dismembered melody of ‘Flux 2’ that sounds like someone is slowly cranking out a tune from an old, rusted music box.
There’s an indefinable complexity to Flux. Turman set outs to create soundscapes that are neither here nor there, giving us the canvas on which to paint our own emotions. This music is beautiful, calming and intriguing – industrial music for the easy-listener.
Lee Vincent
