The first release from a new West Australian-based independent imprint, Adeptsound, Zilverhill is collaboration between two other experimental acts, Schuster and Present Day Buna. So many elements of this album, Eotvos, have the feel of unnatural machinery making their sound apparent in natural settings. Whether it be the sound of a gas rig thudding and grinding underwater off the far north coast or listening to inhuman voices talk at you as you sit and watch the violent fire of a West Australian sunset, Zilverhill is kinda what happens when the afternoon subsides and the day is peeled back into evening to reveal all the delicate shards displaced by your movement and all that has been kept in place by inertia.
The opener, “Veris,†is a prelude to the remaining hour of album, with its twisting elongated keyboard drone the occasional splutter of talk-back radio and sub bass boom. From there things start to get a little more menacing as fiery bursts of distorted noise shudder through second track “Aiken†and what feels like an industrial hammer clanging the way through “Proven.†Halfway through and “Ominous†has a lady recounting the abuses she suffered at the hands of her family which would be more disturbing if it weren’ for the quiet piano being looped throughout. The remainder of the album continues in a similar vein, all muted bass and outer-limit machine clunk. If this isn’ the recorded version of what it sounds like to fall asleep on some off-shore oil rig in the middle of an open ocean, I don’ what else could be.
The length of Eotvos – nearly 70 minutes – might be baulked at by some but the consistent flow of the tracks and the sparing use of sampled humans keeps the listener aware, engaged and, at times, successfully unsettled.
Joel Hedrick
