Tuesday, November 02, 2010

2x12+7 = The Poetry Of Decay



The Poetry Of Decay' compiles Cindytalk's two most recent albums, last year's long-in-development 'The Crackle Of My Soul', and the more recent 'Up Here In The Clouds', together with a 7" released on Klanggalerie in 2003. Together they sharply define the contemporary sound of Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp in contrast with his pre-2001 investigations of broken down rock structures and abstract piano ambience. In the 21st century he's made a move towards obscure computer usage which manifests itself in unsettling spectral ambient music and a range of unclassifiable, textured electronic collages bordering on noise. It's the inherent tension between his textures which makes this body of work a fascinating and often uncomfortable experience. 'The Crackle Of My Soul' is a bleak side of dark and dank ambient music where near-death drones and microtonal scrapes and klangs reminiscent of Kevin Drumm come alive in their attic bedsit/goldfish bowl to scuttle around the space, joined by a piano and teetering at the edge of their own sanity whilst haunted by ghoulish aural mirages. 'Up Here In The Clouds' settles into a less nerve-bitten set of compositions, marked by longer track lengths and ominous drones, still with a taste for cracked electronic textures and imbued with an almost autistic prickliness. 




The 'Transgender Warrior/Guts Of london' 7" completes the album with an ethereal, caustic piece of ambience and one cryptic side of computer music with tactile bass drones and acrid digital noise. 
(Boomkat review)
(Images from the beautiful Transgender Warrior 7")