Let’s be upfront here. If you took a Fuck Buttons album and removed all the rhythmical elelments, all the beats, what you’d have is pretty much a Blanck Mass album. Which is not surprising, given that Benjamin John Power is one half of the British duo. But, seeing as Fuck Buttons’ last album, Tarot Sport, was probably my favourite release of 2009, I’m more than happy to give Blanck Mass the time of day and I’m finding it well worth the listen.
Without the beats, the mood across this work is glacial, slow-moving and epic, but with teaming micro-detail that lifts it above generic ambient. Distorted guitar lava bubbles under searing synth movements. Slow, simple, cyclical chordal structures underpin most tracks though, on something like the 10 minute ‘Raw Deal’, a single chord can maintain interest for the duration. Each track is a miniature world in which Power can explore. He has stated that the pieces are based “around cerebal hypoxia (a medical condition involving a lack of oxygen to the brain)”. With that in mind, I can easily imagine a track such as ‘Chernobyl’ as the soundtrack of the last 4 and a half minutes of life – oddly soothing but epic and melancholy. The “beautiful complexity of the natural world” is also explored, most obvious in the tracks which give you the hint in their titles. ‘Land Disasters’ is built on that midrange distortion fizz so dominant in Fuck Buttons’ work and moves in waves of major and minor harmonic movement creating uncertainty appearing from a dissolving sonic foundation. ‘Weakling Flier’ includes field recordings of (above and below water level) sea life behind its gentle moving monolith of synth to evoke the nature that Power is keen to represent across the album.
If Fuck Buttons had been the soundtrack to late 80s/early 90s rave, then it is undoubtable that Blanck Mass would have soundtracked all the chill-out rooms. This is the kind of relationship the two separate but interconnected entities have. That most of the comparison Blanck Mass garners is from Power’s other act is no criticism or weakness at all. This is another side of the vision, one that enhances the other and also stands on its own as worthwhile work.
Adrian Elmer
