Sydney-based ambient composer / producer Benn DeMole apparently first started making music using computers when he began working as an audio engineer, following a childhood spent playing recorder, flute and didgeridoo. DeMole currently also divides his time between working as one half of ambient hiphop duo Assemblage Point and as a member of physical theatre troupe Strings Attached, recently completing the soundtrack for their upcoming debut production “The Music For The Foreign Installation’ Originally written and produced back in 1998, “Non Silence’ represents DeMole’s second full-length disc and follows on the heels of his debut album “Eyed Side’, also through his own imprint UM Records. Distinctly grounded amidst droning ambience, yawning chasms of deeply textured background noise and sparse, reverberating rhythmic elements, the nine tracks collected here lean at points towards the likes of Lustmord and Pan Sonic’s industrial-tinged atmospheres. What’s particularly notable throughout however, is the unexpected sense of calm and tranquility generated as a result.
While “Stream’ gradually intertwines layers of droning noise into a steady background rush that equally evokes the sense of the flow of wind or the sense of standing next to a vast throbbing furnace, the potential sense of menace is cancelled out by delicate icy harmonics and slow, dubbed-out rhythms that drag things toward considerably more contemplative territory. The considerably more eerie “Das None’ slowly teases heavily-phased bell-like tones out from beneath gauzy layers of humming ambience. “Wire Bush’ meanwhile certainly evokes associations with the aforementioned Pan Sonic in the way it combines the distant thump of repetitive cycling crashing tones with strangely contorted harmonic tones that suggest the cry of whales recorded amidst some relentlessly drilling subaquatic industrial facility. Evocative ambience that soothes despite its comparatively dark textural palette; don’t sleep, as there’s a strictly limited run of 500 copies.
Chris Downton
