Machina Mundi’s parries to the notion of the world as a rigorously interrelated system. Each work consists of slowly developing periods and seething intervals, all of which, though fresh and quixotic, gradually link up in a clearly articulated whole and reveal their wealth of detail.
On a whole, the album sounds simply unearthly: the infernal blasts, flatline hums, and alien percussion of an ever-regenerating cosmos. “Mecanique Celeste” is above all a piece of liquidity: of swirl, whorls, and eddies . It’s also a piece of viscosity: there is, after all, no flow without resistance. The action consists in wiry, sticky tones and the granular movement of bubbles of sound and the shifting interplay of chugging, contrapuntal layers. An outward-bound drift features on latter works; a rich, sumptuous sound, referring to a drone, but with the tuning bulging in all directions. This adds a trancey, psychedelic element to the proceedings, which both draws the listener in and disorients them in equal measure.
Abby Helasdottir takes up the same terrain time and again, ratifying and renewing it as though a sedimentary body of knowledge, with intensity and solemnity added by her emphasizing simple phrases that bring out the subtle powers of the music or elsewhere bolstering the sonic density through various hybrid spectrums of sound. It ends up being a rather focused facsimile of fictional outer-space. Helasdottir’s arrangements enable easy synchronization. In fact, one can often see the sounds; the timely and smooth movements from astringent upper registers to dreamier pockets of opulence being particularly impressive. And although on a whole it does lack a certain bite, the album remains a wonderfully strange and concise tableau.
Max Schaefer
