Saturday, September 26, 2009

Saturn Form Essence - SFE000451208



My stool has been particularly soft the past several days and I blame my constant need of post-fecal-deposit-showers on the strange undulations on Saturn Form Essence's "SFE000151208." Why? Well, I've listened to the forty minutes of rumbling, stomach shaking drone about four times in the past week. You can gauge whether listening to the same sounds for over three hours was a waste of time on your own but my bowels feel clean and empty. It's kind of like the claims on the back of Earth's "Earth 2." You know the ones: "...found it difficult to think of the things that disturb me... Afterwards, everything seemed right with the world." Or, "When I got up, I could swear I was a few inches off the ground." How about this medical miracle? "My tension headaches have disappeared!" Saturn Form Essence's curiously titled sound experiment could claim the same effects and add colon cleansing to the list. In fact, I think I know who funded this recording:

Saturn Form Essence's music however deserves a bit of analysis. While it may have miracle effects, few will care to actually listen to it the whole way through unless inebriated, high or watching Baywatch in slow motion with volume on mute. Musically though, the single untitled track is an unwavering wall of dread and uneasiness. While most drone prefers to simply stay in one place for a moment then move to a new location like a tribe of retarded nomads, (not that nomads are retarded, but slow nomads... ahhhh you don't get it) Saturn Form Essence is fond of floating in the same place forever. While forever might seem like a long time, and it is, if you were placed in a cell, with no clock and no windows in the dark with only Saturn Form Essence playing, its possible you might live longer, the body's natural processes slowed down believing that each massive sweeping swell of synth is a unit of time.

Three aspects of comprise the entire forty-four minute marathon of numbness. The first and most noticeable is a low to midrange cresting melody of around four or five notes all played at the tempo which a dead snail's speed is measured. Occasionally this melody moves an octave higher, providing at least some sense of change however don't get surprised when it simply drops from the sky and plummets back to Earth (pun intended). The second aspect is the ultra low end rumblings which are the cause of my intestine-massage-treatment. This rumbling is static, never changing and always felt deep in the recesses of the core. The third and final aspect is a very faint static in the 16khz region. Though possibly nothing more than white-noise, it is there and because so little is happening, it is very audible.

If you allow the undulations to take over you, you may begin to hear phantom sounds, I occasionally feel as if I am hearing sonar beeps in the back of my head. This is most likely a bizarre waveform creation of the multiple effects coming into contact with each other. Ultimately, Saturn Form Essence have created an interesting soundscape though I don't know exactly what the purpose of such an exploration might have been. I do get a sense of cosmic expansiveness from "SFE000451208" but I would rather get that cosmic atmosphere from something more interesting and complex such as Darkthrone's debut, Soulside Journey. In terms of dread and uneasiness, Perdition is much more adept at producing those hateful energies. As for a straight ahead drone piece, it is worthy but doesn't award me anything when it ends. I would much rather listen to the Sunn O))) and Boris collaboration or Earth's early albums.

What I do like about this release though is the simplicity and seeming ease at which the sounds morph into new, but stale effects. The whole thing is a bit boring but maybe that was the idea. Hell if you're stuck floating around in space for hours waiting for your life to diminish, there isn't going to be a lot going on. Maybe a star here and a piece of debris there... but as you slowly watch the Earth or your live-allowing spacecraft float away, perhaps this could be the soundtrack to your plunge into the inevitable abyss that is the end of your existence.

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