MARSLYDHODE

Marslydhode is a dark, earthy landscape with intermittent sounds of toy piano, electronic beats, and acoustic percussion. The ambience of this one track sounds like a slowly developing field recording of nature progressive from day to night, in no special location in particular. Frogs, birds, crickets and various other insects can be heard infesting the landscape as the distant klang and drone of far-off bells and wind-chimes can be heard. Occasional electronic beats, also far in the distance, can be heard. The beats don't add too much to the landscape except to add a recurring theme of no importance or as an addition of random texture. Organic metallic resonances of pans or metal buckets agitate the soundscape, which are accompanied by the soft sounds of a human's breath. The atmosphere is very dark, damp and suffocating, almost as if this could be the soundtrack to be buried alive under a barn in the woods.

It's been a while since I've heard some truly captivating field recording based electronic music, and this really quenches my thirst for such an album. This whole album is much like an improved and more interesting version of Bass Communion's "Ghosts" album, so anyone a fan of that album should take notice of Lydhode's Marslydhode.

As I wrote in my last progressive electronic review, I'm no expert in the genre. Nonetheless, I've always had a kind of fascination with the sort of dark ambient, minimalist music that appears on this release. Klaus Schulze this is certainly not; to be honest, most of the sound on this release comes from a buzzing, static sounding drone that plays nearly continuously, only stopping for very brief periods. Nonetheless, there is quite a bit of depth here, with a lot of very subtle arrangement behind the drone and a lot of musical touches that one has to listen for very carefully to even hear.

The single, eponymous track on this release begins with some very dark, spooky ambience which is minimally assisted by some percussion and keyboard, and when I say minimal I mean very, very minimal. The keyboards can often hardly be heard behind the pulsating ambience at the front of the track, and when the percussion appears it's often only a single hit. After about 4 minutes of introduction, the percussion actually strikes ups a rhythmic beat (though it's still very far back in the mix) and other sounds begin to find their way to the forefront as well: there's a decent amount of input from what sounds like wind-chimes and some minimal sounds from what sounds like some sort of synthesizer. The droning ambience which has been part of the track from the very beginning changes subtly as well, becoming less atmospheric and spooky and taking on a more distorted, industrial edge. Nonetheless, it's astounding how atmospheric this track manages to be when probably 80% of the sound is just a static drone: there's always some kind of tonal sound happening in the background, and that makes for a fascinating, delicate aesthetic. About halfway through the drone fades back a little bit and the track takes on a more straightforward ambient texture, with very faint percussion and synths creating a nice change of pace from the more droning first half. Though the rather dissonant windchimes still appear pretty prominently, this definitely isn't unpleasant music to listen to; even as the static drone slowly makes its way back into the track it simply gives the impression of a building intensity, a sort of indirect way of controlling the feel of the track even with such minimal arrangement. In fact, the drone is such a big part of the track that when it finally drops away to nothing the track feels incredibly empty, and it imbues the final minutes of the track with an incredible sense of finality and really helps to highlight (by its absence) the keyboard and synth sounds at the end of the track.

So though this is extremely minimal in nature, there is something very compelling (to me, at least) about this kind of music. Obviously not everyone will enjoy this, and there are those who would probably even question if this counts as music. Nonetheless, as an amateur tinkerer in this kind of music I have an immense amount of respect for anyone who can make it as well as Lydhode does here, and keep it as interesting as they do for a full half hour. I imagine fans of this kind of minimalism will find this album an interesting listen, even if it's not a necessary addition to a prog collection.

3/5