Lost Few is the audio-visual project of Melbourne-based experimental artist David Thomson, who first emerged under the alias back in 2013 with his debut 7” ‘Winter’s Voice’, before going on to issue a split cassette release with fellow Melbourne outfit Necking. ‘Between The Silence’ offers up Thomson’s debut album as Lost Few on Australian label Southern Lights and sees him crafting ominous yet frequently beautiful atmosphere by fusing dark electronic ambience with found sounds, treated female vocal and occasional post-techno elements.
Opening track ‘Blessed Are The Tears We Forget To Shed’ suggests some vast machine slowly whirring to life as dark distorted bass synths prowl restlessly against echoing metallic percussive elements and the occasional gaseous rush of air, only for the menacing electronics to briefly drop out of the mix entirely, replaced by an eerily beautiful operatic female vocal that rises like an ghost up out of the aural mist.
‘Indecision’ takes the building momentum and carries it forward, sending tribal percussive tones and eerily cycling phased electronics pulsing against looping wordless female vocals, the slow swoop of the intersecting harmonies gradually merging with the track’s blurred rhythmic throb, in what’s easily one of this album’s most hypnotically immersive moments. By this album’s second half though, the abstracted, post-techno rhythms that have played at the edges now take more of a centre stage as they shift more towards the foreground of the tracks.
‘Meek’ sees a minimal techno kickdrum fluttering against humming layers of background ambience and reverberating, digital manipulated crashes as hi-pitched modulated tones chirp like insects against the tidal pulse, before ‘Quietly We Wish For Silence’ places lurching angular rhythms at its centre as phased loops cycle endlessly against whirring coldwave synths, feather-light yet mechanically cold hi-hat flickers and an elastic-sounding backbone of kickdrums. Intriguing stuff that bodes well for future releases from Lost Few.
