SPLINTERS, VOL. I: TREMOR

This "Tremor" gives me a tremor.

2021 has opened the theatre curtain with BATTLESTATIONS' latest release whilst we expect another dawn under such a terrible pandemic situation. We are also amazed at their album "Splinters, Vol. I: Tremor" featuring only one suite "Tremor" because they have occupied Post Rock fans' inner mind for a decade. This long suite "Tremor" has slow and steady movements in the whole aspect like a kind of traditional Chinese exercise aka tai chi, and therefore it would be tough for some 'rock' fans to digest and absorb as music nutrition soon. In this sense every progressive electronic mania can accept this sensitive creek easily, I imagine.

Synthesizer-oriented keen soundpoints that sometimes prick our mind are also mystic. Repetitive surrealistic melody pillows drive us into a dreamy dream. The development of vibes and movements sounds like a feel flows. We would be immersed in the last phase filled with calm but unsettled tuning balance. Their soundscape in this creation is mysterious but aggressive. The electronic atmosphere around them is quiet but energetic. Their ambient expression, especially brilliant beautiful synthesizer works based on echoic monotone in the middle part, reminds me of the similarity to "Une Belle Journée" by a French electronic artist Nicolas Dick.

Not straightly recommended for every post 'rock' fan but good for progressive electronic followers, let me say. Ah of course, I love this album. ;)

This is the first prog album I have bought from 2021, and as such obviously up to now the best. Furthermore it tops all I have heard from 2019 and 2020 and would ultimately be a very worthy winner of the year.

The Battlestations are listed as Post Rock because of their history but are for some time on a journey to progressive electronic, which on this album they have properly completed. There are no drums on this album and no guitar that sounds like one, it's all electronic including some samples, so based on this album hardly anyone would classify the as post/math rock.

Not only is the album electronic, it is excellent at that. It has the same experimental spirit that can be found in the early work of the pioneers of the genre, think of Tangerine Dream's masterpieces Zeit and Phaedra. I mention these two because from Zeit to Phaedra TD introduced the rhythmic sequencer, and Battlestations here balance more ambient soundscapes and rhythmic, more structured parts in a masterful way. Post rock sensitivity can be heard to some extent in the relaxed approach and the pleasant tonal motifs that make the album more accessible than more radical experimental electronic work, still avoiding anything like clear melodies or a traditional song structure.

Splinters Vol. I is just a single piece of 43 minutes. Sound generation amd sampling of course is done using twenty-first century standards, distinguishing the album from early electronic work. It is an atmospheric, slow developing work that features sound experimentation, meditative parts, but also sequencer-like repetitive rhythms and some harmonic material. It is richer in ideas than much of this genre; although the music takes its time to transform from one part to the next, there is plenty to discover. Something that sets this album apart is the musicality by which the different parts have been woven together; everything feels organic and smooth, but it is far from minimalism or drone. People may call it "ambient", but to listen to it like ambient music would mean missing much of what's going on. It is basically a more friendly and warm version of experimental electronic which in other work can come over as quite intellectual and cold.

Different motifs and structures come and go, held together by an overarching approach to sounds, always reminding us that happiness and sadness and all the often strange and unexpected but at some point familiar things in life are only a small and transient part of something bigger that was before we were and will still be after we have gone.

Approach with caution if you're not into electronic and experimental stuff, but I say 5 stars hands down.

One of Belgian-based classical electronicist Battlestation's two album releases over the course of 2021.

1. "Tremor" (43:08) Wow! What a wonderfully integrative journey! I felt as if I was among people--like I was sleepwalking--and yet it was also so dreamlike, so interplanetary and inter-dimensional! I could hear/sense Battlestations, but it was also so new, so heavily-treated and shifting so subtly, so masterfully. I absolutely loved the stunning eighth minute: it felt as if I were in an outdoor winter shopping scene with outdoor speakers playing old instrumental strings versions of Christmas carols! The next ten minutes sound like something BRIAN ENO and ROBERT FRIPP could have pulled together during their early explorations of the Ambient Music scene, while the third ten minutes sound so much like the first ten minutes of PAT METHENY & LYLE MAYS' "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls" that I kept waiting for the human voice to step in and surprise me with numeric countings (even though that only happens near the end of Pat and Lyle's song)! After that it sounds like the soundscapes that I've been familiar with from BATTLESTATIONS, though I could also, from time to time, hear Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tangerine Dream, Alio Die, and yet it was all so fresh and exciting! A wonderful, beautiful 43-minute journey (even if the second ten minute passage drag on a bit too long)! (77/85)

A-/five stars; a minor masterpiece of dreamscape travel.