| Halfway through my third listen to Decomposition, I realized why some of its tracks had already begun to sound creepily familiar - the same palette of minor-key synth hooks and pad washes used by illbient beatnik Thavius Beck was shared by the Mortal Kombats and Area 51s and Dooms of my misspent youth in attempts to appropriately soundtrack the pixilated bad-ass-ness of Sub-Zero and multicolored space marines alike. For my next pass through Decomposition, I'll have to pull out the ol' Counter-Strike CD and see how the two match up. Lest all of these geeky gaming references send you running, let me try and place Thavius Beck's moody downtempo in a more respectable context. His beats are of the salvage-heap variety found in Autechre's early work, albeit less intricately arranged and more straightforwardly moody. The most successful tracks here are carefully layered, organic fogs that settle with the striking eeriness of a cLOUDDEAD collage. "(Music Will Be) The Death of Us All" combination of shimmering synth drones and distant, processed vocals is nearly trance-inducing in execution, and "Some Call It the End" samples falsetto vocals and biblical soundbites, bathed as they are in endless reverb, sound unexpectedly gorgeous. Decomposition doesn't slide neatly into the genre slots of video game soundtrack or end-of-the-world instrumental trip-hop, even though its tone is consistent with both. Instead, it subscribes to the unpredictable underpinnings of dream logic, even in its most conventional moments, and ends up far more evocative than any canned soundtrack. - Splendid |
2XLP/Out Of Print