Zilverhill 'Latent-Active-Descent' CD
As the title indicates, this new album from the excellent duo Zilverhill comprises of three parts. Rest assured; they continue their exploration of weird music, ambience, favourably eerie samples and voices, and once again I´m captured to the bone. The album gets increasingly more and more sinister, the paranoia and claustrophobia are creeping closer and the nightmarish sounds even more present. This is ambient music; sounds making a full impression of a song that contains no real melody. But the sounds create images; both beautiful and morbid, and the samples of Richard Nixon speaking are very effective for the result. The distant voices and the animalistic instincts sneak your way. Once again, Zilverhill make me close my eyes and enjoy their material to the fullest extent.
J. Loon - Nordic Vision
Zilverhill results from the common efforts of Australian artist Schuster (Perth WA) & the British Present Day Buna. Both artists each have their own project, but now came back together for the 2nd album of Zilverhill. The album features 3 chapters, which are indicated in the title of this release. The "Latent" part is my personal favorite one. The "Active" part brings 3 quieter pieces although you don't exactly have to expect some kind of peaceful music here. The last part of the album entitled "Descent" brings a more pronounced dark ambient impression. Zilverhill remains pretty frightening in its composition. This kind of music would totally fit to thriller and/or horror-like films. Don’t listen to this alone especially tracks 2, 7, 9.
1) It brings a kind of nebulous sound with spoken samplings and some kind of low tempo rhythms. 2) Zilverhill here launches a devilish piece of tormenting ambient music that will give you cold sweat. Screams of horror are like emerging from imaginary dungeons while anguishing soundscape structures and droning percussions accompany them. This track resonates the sound of torture. 3) Radio talk fx and minimal percussions, a progressive loud disturbance noise emerge in 3:00. 4) Droning sounds of suspense and anxiety feel. 5) Sci-fi horror sound like, feels like being at an alien lab witnessing human testing, creepy! 6) Soundscapes of a long train ride and hallucinations. 7) Dronning percussions in a obscure low creepy timeless haunting ambient sound. 8) A murdering has occurred in this track and the murder has cleaned the scene. 9) The sound seems to be emerging from an imaginary and haunted subway. The sharp and iron-like scratch sounds will give you goose pimples.!10) A real fascinating piece of obscure ambient stuff ending with anguished spoken vocals reminding me of the 80s project Last Few Days.
Enzo Cappellini - KZSU
This album comes out of left field and it's a surprising and welcome addition to any dark-ambient or noise fan's record collection, Zilverhill's "Latent-Active-Descent". The sound artist here is one Tim Bayes, who hails from Perth, Australia and has been musically active since the mid-80's. Under the name, Schuster, Bayes put out several cassettes at the height of the cassette network era and until the mid-90's after which there seems to be a gap in his discography. Returning to the scene in 2008, he created Zilverhill and "Latent-Active-Descent" is the second album from this project, a haunting and memorable piece of work that presents a lysergically twisted world of desolation and despair.
Bayes claims these recordings were influenced by German outsider artist, August Natterer(1868-1933), specifically his painting, "Axle of the World, With Rabbit" which Natterer once said to have predicted World War I. Another correlation is Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" from 1872, the follow-up to "Alice In Wonderland". This music, for me, seems to have successfully encapsulated some of the concepts to which it draws inspiration from. Using all manner of noises, drones, vocal snippets, amelodic synth tones, loops and echoes to create a soundscape that captures some of the essence of, perhaps, an extreme schizophrenic mental state or the elaborate fantasy world of a psychedelic trip.
The tracks here change form as they metamorphosize, the sound is never only in one place but always, seemingly, a mirror reflection to itself (another correlation to "Through The Looking Glass"). Never cliche, never repetitive, always in a state of flux, even the voice snippets are caught in some otherworld where they are transformed by their surroundings. For example, some of the snippets are from interviews with Richard Nixon and used in one way could be very typical, but Bayes mixes them in such a way to sound as if you are listening to some private conversation you should not be hearing. It is this ambiguous, garbled sense of mystery to these compositions that creates for the listener wonder and fascination.
"Latent-Active-Descent" comes in a full color four panel digipak sleeve in a limited edition of 500 copies, 250 of which come with an exclusive hand numbered postcard. A co-release between Adeptsound and Blind Shouter Productions, this is a brilliant album, one of the best of 2009, that shows the drone/dark-ambient genre is still rife with possibilities.
Phillip Klingler - Heathen Harvest
La verdad es que no muchas referencias nos llegan desde el continente Austral y las que nos llegan suelen ser muy particulares, aunque la mayoría están llenas de calidad. En este caso nos encontramos con un artista llamado Tim Bayes, el cual lleva activo desde los ochenta, siendo uno de los músicos underground más prolíficos de Australia. Más tarde tuvo un parón y es ahora a finales de la primera década del 2000 cuando retoma su trabajo musical con este nuevo proyecto llamado ZILVERHILL, aunque este “Latent-Active-Descent”, es en realidad su segundo trabajo.
Centrado en los sonidos oscuros en su vertiente Dark Ambient y ambient industrial, Tim sabe darle su toque personal, sabe sacarle el mayor partido a los sonidos, consiguiendo crear ambientes de lo más decadentes y oscuros, usando para ello, tanto efectos vocales como sonidos retorcidos hasta sus últimas consecuencias. No hay una línea musical concreta sino más bien un viaje sonoro que utiliza el sonido más cercano a estados mentales tan delicados como la esquizofrenia o al delirio. Siempre tratados desde el punto de vista del paciente, consiguiendo momentos de dolor, de extrema confusión y sobre todo de desesperación. Todo ello forma un coctel letal donde no hay hueco para la esperanza ni la curación, sólo queda esperar el final, que por lo oído no será nada bueno.
El disco se presenta en un digipack a todo color, muy en la línea de las imágenes psicodélicas que suelen ser dañinas para los epilépticos. Está limitado a 500 copias y las 250 primeras van acompañadas de una postal numerada a mano.
Resumiendo estamos ante un disco muy personal, muy extraño pero a la vez muy atrayente y muy oscuro, una buena adquisición para los amantes de los sonidos más oscuros y personales.
A duo of Schuster (Perth WA) & pRESENT dAY bUNA (Sheffield UK). Roots in experimental, found sounds and electronics. This release is dark and murky, full of mysterious sound clips, some with political tones, others reeking of pain and despair. Wind swept tunnel sounds and slight rhythmical bloops. Torture dungeons, deserted railway cars with canary passengers, spooky vocal clips, sounds that really fuck with your brain and paint demented pictures - experimentalism just how I like it.
Cinder - KFJC
Billed as the “integration” of Schuster (based in Perth) and Present Day Buna (based in Sheffield, England) – two acts with roots dating back to the early ’80s – Zilverhill is a vague entity requiring quite a bit of attention. Latent-Active-Descent is the follow-up to 2008’s debut Eotvos and unfolds as an hour-long foray divided into the three parts of the album’s title. It floats by nicely enough as background music, but treating it as such would be neglecting the countless colliding details at play. There are faded drones and clattering percussion in some spots, distorted vocal samples buried deep in other spots, and much more to discover lurking in the broad fringes.
Mostly these are ghostly, slow-burn instrumentals suffused with loneliness, chaos, and a faint sense of dread. ‘Erebus’ has the sense of a blinking beacon lost in deep fog, while the following ‘Post Antrim’ is at once cavernous and more active. Influences on the album reportedly include artist August Natterer, author Lewis Carroll, and the phantom of Richard Nixon, which gives you an idea of the all-encompassing breadth of vision. Each of these 10 tracks offers something distinct, though never casual or light of heart.
Doug Wallen Cyclic Defrost
This is a gloomy, twilit descent into dark but inspiring territories. While it brightens towards the end, a melancholy air clings to it, and its darker passages are uneasy and tense. This is probably not recommended for anyone prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder, or suffering from serious depression, although for some the bleakness might actually be consoling. The final track is even titled "To Autumn".
Zilverhill features industrial/experimental veterans Tim Bayes of Schuster and Paul Carr of pRESENT dAY bUNA. They first worked together in the 1980s as IBF (Ideas Beyond Filth). All these projects are new to me but on this evidence they must be worth investigating further.
Overall, the album sits loosely in the cinematic dark ambient sector, but with some distinctive touches. The opening "Cornerstone" demonstrates Zilverhill's skill at combining woozy, strangely decayed chords, dialogue samples and an almost tangible pressure created by a growing fog of sound that only becomes denser on the following tracks.
The fog-bound, elegiac strings and mournful percussion of "Unceasing" produce an atmosphere not unlike the defunct German industrial project SRP. This is the most cinematic piece and the album's finest moment. The brightest moment, by constrast, comes from the unexpectedly melodic opening of "Sixteen Provinces", which initially seems a little too kitsch, but it's worth tolerating to hear dark drones and a swirl of voices gradually infiltrate and prevail before it again returns. "Erebus" is its dark twin and is certainly the most sinister track.
"Cone" features distressed choral samples and drones that create a gloomy atmosphere reminiscent of the drones on the soundtrack to Bela Tarr's seven-hour film "Satantango" - a remorselessly bleak slice of Central European gloom. There is an unresolved contradiction on the album between the European feel generated by some of the music and the extensive use of American voice samples, many of which are partly lost in the murk and hard to make out. Some non-American voices might have been interesting, as would more purely instrumental tracks. That said, most of the samples are used well and often add significantly to the atmosphere.
"Latent-Active-Descent" is so well produced that it's only small details that can really be faulted. "The Eternal Day Is Done" features uneasy, animal-like sounds that irritate, but this is probably deliberate. Here, as elsewhere, the work of Inanna comes to mind, particularly when harsh metallic sound cuts through the constantly shifting detail.
This is only a limited release, which is a real shame, as it deserves a wide audience. The arrangements breathe and the elements shimmer in a way that shows that real craftsmanship and attention to detail have gone into what is one of the most satisfying albums of the year. There is nothing revolutionary or dramatically innovative about any of the elements here, yet they cohere into something that often feels fresh and instantly memorable, leaving lasting traces and compelling and rewarding repeat listening.
Alexei Monroe [8/10] - Connexion Bizarre
This second collaboration between these two veterans of the 1980s UK noise/cassette underground is enigmatically rooted in the works of Lewis Carroll and schizophrenic outsider artist August Natterer. The result is an engaging, yet temporally dislocated, foray into ambient industrial music that sometimes favorably recalls some of Cabaret Voltaire's more abstract and loop-based moments (as well as a host of darker, and more sociopathic, tape-based experimentalists).
Zilverhill consists of Australia’s Schuster and Sheffield’s Present Day Buna, a rather inscrutable pair. I could not unearth much information about them except that Schuster was involved in the early stages of the infamously heavy and frightening Dieter Müh. The conceptual foundations of this album are equally mysterious and murky: while I can certainly see how its abstract and often nightmarish atmosphere and strange echoing field recordings and voices could be inspired by a schizophrenic artist, the album also features an inexplicable fixation with Richard Nixon recordings (“Nixon’s portentous voice & actions are intuitively fractured, reappraised, and manipulated to form the spine of the pieces”). It is hard to reconcile how it all coherently ties together thematically, but thankfully the philosophic underpinnings are largely irrelevant to the appreciation of the music.
The sonic content of Latent-Active-Descent is a surreal collage of shifting drones, hypnotically repetitive rhythms, blurred electronics, and disembodied voices. Sometimes it is relatively gentle, such as the sleepy marimba of “Sixteen Provinces,” but (more often than not) it can get quite harsh (as in “The Eternal Day Is Done,” which is reminiscent of some of Severed Heads' early tape loop experiments). However, the songs invariably writhe and seethe with all kinds of panning and surging sampled mindfuckery regardless of the basic material that each piece is built upon. The only time the duo fall flat is with the recurrent howls of agony throughout “Unceasing,” which is heavy-handed to an almost Lætherstrip-ian degree.
While its slow-burning and fever dreamlike nature requires a few listens to fully appreciate, Latent-Active-Descent is definitely an inspired and enjoyable effort. Though the material is very firmly rooted in the ‘80s industrial/noise underground aesthetic, it does not sound dated or regressive at all. Rather, it sounds like a great lost recording from that era (but with the clarity and density of more modern recording technology). This is some eerie, unusual, and otherworldly work.
Anthony D'Amico - Brainwashed
Duo nato in tempi recenti grazie alla collaborazione tra Tim Buyes, attivo nel settore industrial-sperimentale sin dagli anni '80 col progetto Schuster, e Paul Carr, mente di Present Day Buna. I due lasciano momentaneamente le proprie creazioni principali per dar vita al secondo lavoro firmato Zilverhill, dopo il debutto avvenuto nel 2008 con "Eötvös". "Latent-Active-Descent" è diviso in tre sezioni che corrispondono ai tre termini del titolo: in generale le tracce sono contraddistinte da uno spiccato astrattismo elettronico che passa da ammassi sonori più potenti fino alle flebili movenze dei pezzi finali, ma sempre con una forte carica ipnotica alla base; oltre a ciò sono disseminati in tutto il lavoro campionamenti della voce di Nixon (sebbene le motivazioni di tale scelta rimangono oscure). Nella prima tranche di brani intervengono ricerche ritmiche divise tra tribalismi ossessivi e beat sperimentali, con un'organizzazione sonora che può ricordare, a tratti, i Coil. Gli astrattismi ipnotici permangono nella parte centrale del lavoro, esente però da percussioni e maggiormente cupa, nonché arricchita da ridondanze sonore e rumorismi. Per contro il capitolo finale tende a diminuire i toni e a far leva su motivi ancor più insistenti e monocordi di quelli precedenti. Un po' simile ad alcuni prodotti della Loki Foundation ed incentrato su un sound astrale che non disdegna l'uso di rumori evocativi, "Latent-Active-Descent" si presenta come un album dalle sfaccettature diverse, ma al tempo stesso arduo per chi non mastica la materia ambient. Edizione di 500 copie in digipak, di cui 250 accompagnate da una esclusiva cartolina.
Michele Viali - Dark Room Magazine (Italy)
Zilverhill is a collaboration between two artists; Schuster and pRESENT dAY bUNA. Latent-Active Descent is their 2nd release together as Zilverhill. Both artists’ work stretches right back across the experimental tape culture of the 1980s. Zilverhill is an experimental dark ambient project in sound. The album is split into three sections Latent, Active and Descent. The album is also informed by the art of August Natterer and Lewis Carroll’s ‘Looking Glass’.
Latent starts off with ‘Corner Stone’ starts off with a political speech (Nixon I believe) ambient drones and a repetitive tribal beat to good effect, the speech is muffled in its clarity forcing it to work as a sound with the drones and beat to eventually be replaced by single piano notes at the end of the piece. This is followed by the lone strings of ‘Unceasing’ which are quickly complimented by lone drones, pulses and rabid vocal sounds. A dreamlike quality rules here and carries across the whole album. ‘Sixteen Provinces’ begins with simple and minimal combined Xylophone beats providing a gentle beginning with more speeches and sounds interweaving throughout. What starts of as a minimal atmosphere soon becomes intensified by the prominence of ambient noise and the speech, this rises to an intense climax and reduces back to Xylophone and piano notes. The Latent section ends on ‘Erebus’, which begins with tunnelled sounds sided with short drones of sound. The tunnelled sound begins to pulse more and more lifelike breathlike samples interlude and reduces to silence.
Active: Post Antrim starts with a combination of keyboard drone, Life sounds and fractured vocals, a darker feeling is prevalent here. This track crackles and proves a mastery of the low level dark ambience throughout. Birdtrain continues a combination of what I believe is field recordings and drones. These are combined with effects to allow each of the differing sounds varying levels of prominence throughout. Cone begins with a sound that sounds like someone rubbing their finger around a glass, this appears on and off throughout the track, and nightmarish dream like sounds and broken dialogue and that ends the active section. The active section in my opinion is not as prominent as the latent section, am I sensing some humour or tracks working against their titles?
Descent; No Body No Murder; overlays drones that have a deep feedback, in parts this is overlaid with more dialogue. The tension with in the track lies between the levels of differing drone and how they subtly overlap each other, creaking sounds are then thrown in to the fold. The Eternal Day Is Done starts with an instant combination of maracas like percussion, load rumbles and some distorted and treated music. Dialogue (abstracted) joins in throughout and loud jangling sounds couple with guitar distortion which unlike other tracks makes a more prominent build up within the track, descending well with hums and chimes at the end. To Autumn finalises Descent with looping drones that build up in sync with other sounds that combine to sound like human singing, a kind of distant wailing, ending with angry shouting and that is the end of the sequence.
Latent – Active – Descent works well as an album allowing certain sounds to dominate some tracks whereas some tracks are kept neutral in levels allowing the listener to choose which part they wish to give the most attention. Overall, Zilverhill are a more subtle project who allow their pieces to grow in an organic way, some pieces will not allow any prominence of their different sounds combined where as some will climax and wind down. This is a good album and I recommend it to any fan of the more subtle variety of ambient dreamscapes.
Zenon Gradkowski - Judas Kiss
Zilverhill is the duo of Schuster and Present Day Buna. Latent-Active-Descent is their second album together.
It’s divided into three segments titled, you guessed it, Latent, Active and Descent. It’s possibly better to simply approach it as one full work, a murky mix of muted atmospherics and corroded electronics. Opener
‘Corner Stone’ begins with the sound of birdsong slowly and surely being swamped out by grinding drum rhythms and declamatory speech making. It isn’t long, by second track ‘Unceasing’ in fact, before the sound
of tormented screams is enmeshed by eerily clanking hums and throbs.
So far it’s all standard power electron-ics themes. But once Zilverhill get the screaming and pounding out of their systems, this becomes a much more contemplative and insinuatingly sinister soundtrack of a paranoid
and diseased mind - disembodied voices ficker around what sounds like a cavernous caged cell in which the listener has willingly imprisoned themselves.
Euan Andrews - Rock-a-rolla magazine
I've been sitting on this album for several months now, delaying the review over and over again, and for that, I'd like to apologize to the label who was kind enough to send me this promotional compact disc. But I've had my reasons; I've just found it hard to come up with a coherent allocution since I, some days, been enjoying the album really much, and while at other, I've felt the other way around.
And I still haven't made my mind up, but I just can't abide any longer now, so here goes my review of ZILVERHILL's (second) album "Latent-Active-Descent".
It's a... yeah, it's a dark ambient release from the fairly small Australian label Adept Sound.
We get a fair dose of manipulated sounds, drones and unrecognisable instruments, samples and field recordings. Sometimes even with a simple melody, maybe thanks to a beating drum, and sometimes with sudden more violent noise explosions.
The material is, while at its best, really heavy for the heart with effects placed with utmost precision exactly where they should be, and this sick feeling of isolation and mental institution is strong, apparent and exhausting. That, in dark ambient terms, means that the result is very good. I will use, as a reference, the second track where layer after layer after layer of weird machinery, static sounds and samples are stacked upon each other for several minutes. After a while, you'll hear some violent, screamed cries and crows and some pulsating beat and God knows what exactly. This might sound as a mess on paper, but it's really well executed.
And there are several just as good tracks in there, but the album also has another, pale side and you might, track after track, just think to yourself that this is just another dark ambient release and nothing special really.
But. Often, and especially today, I'll let the positive thoughts conquer, even though I've been listening to this darkness for the last hours, and my concluding remark says that this is a fine dark ambient release, in the whole. Sometimes awesome, sometimes boring, but you know, in the whole it's fine.
Nothing for the uninitiated nor the faint-hearted. But certainly something for fans of the genre.
Zilverhill results from the common efforts of Australian artist Schuster (Perth WA) & the British Present Day Buna. Both artists each have their own project, but now came back together for the 2nd album of Zilverhill. This opus features 3 chapters, which are indicated in the title of this release. The "Latent" part is my personal favorite one and the least I can say is that Zilverhill here launches a devilish piece of tormenting ambient music. Especially the "Unceasing"-cut will give you cold sweat. Screams of horror are like emerging from imaginary dungeons while they're accompanied by anguishing soundscape structures and droning percussions. This track resonates the sound of torture. Numerous dark ambient lovers will really like the anguishing character of this track. The opening cut "Corner Stone" isn't bad yet. It brings a kind of nebulous sound with spoken samplings and some kind of low tempo rhythms. The "Active" part brings 3 quieter pieces although you don't exactly have to expect some kind of peaceful music here. Zilverhill remains pretty frightening in its composition. This kind of music would totally fit to thriller and/or horror-like films. The last part of the album entitled "Descent" brings a more pronounced dark ambient impression. Especially the last cut entitled "To Autumn" is a real fascinating piece of obscure ambient stuff ending with anguished spoken vocals reminding me of the 80s project Last Few Days. Another recommended piece is "The Eternal Day Is Done" which sounds like it is emerging from an imaginary and haunted subway. The sharp and iron-like scratch sounds will give you goose pimples. This is a remarkable ambient release coming out on a small, but interesting label! (DP:8)DP.
Discourse of the second album of Australians ZILVERHILL form such emotional- ideological components (them, by the way, postulate musicians themselves - Schuster and Present Of day Of buna) as cold, sarcasm, intoxication, schizophrenia, depression. Of the more [konkretizirovannykh] inspirations - [absurdistskie] pearls of Lewis Carroll (in particular, the selected episodes “of Alice into [Zazerkale]”) and pictures of August [Netterera] (August Of natterer), in particular “celestial axis, with the rabbit” (Axle of of the Of world, with Of rabbit). With this rabbit in general it left interesting piece. In 1907,April 1, exactly during the day of laughter, future artist and future patient of psychiatric hospital, and is thus far “simple electrician” August Of natterer of beginnings actively to hallucinate - after half-hour to it appeared 10 thousand brightest pictures of terrible law court and other entertaining subjects, which it subsequently actively depicted on the paper. In Axle of of the Of world, with Of rabbit according to of artist, is expressed “the uncertainty in the success, in a good outcome”, on its assertion, the picture was the prophecy of the First World War. Imprinted in the [dikovatykh] means of rabbit, half of the body of zebra and glass head of donkey, mental illness here is so terrible as is attractive. In the damp, filled by the [koposhashchimisya] worms of the sounds of dark of ambient (- A) to soil album ZILVERHILL is felt the same - let not confidence in the poor end, but uncertainty in the successful outcome - accurately. Not determined, [iskrevlennaya] by question mark and the very perceptible threat into Latent-Active-Descent everywhere.August Of natterer, Axle of of the Of world, with Of rabbit
The third of [personaliya], which in a strange manner proved to be significant for the record of album ZILVERHILL - Nixon (Nixon), it is necessary to assume that he was once the President of the USA. The fragments of its speeches, the records implanted into the body, made political credo of album republic discretion. However, Presidential election proved to be personally for me largest riddle of disk. Rest in ZILVERHILL like is understandable and “it is conditionally edible”: and the logic of the intensity of the energy escalation of sounding, from the weak phases of [passionarnosti] passing to the culmination and, then, to the extinction (Latent-Active-Descent, in accordance with the name), and the insanity of field records, and the subduing jackets of imaginary calmness, and the similarity “of Cygnus” of hays -[Sansa], and the artistic knock of printed machines… Probably, not too it is important, why precisely Nixon, why precisely Natterer and why again [kerollovskaya] Alice, indeed as a result came out in a good sense experimental album with the abundance of dark moods.
Stigmata Magazine (Babel Fish Translation)
Last year I reviewed Zilverhill debut album ‘+EötVös +’. That album was a real surprise and a very interesting and intense sound universe. Now they are back again with a second offering, so my hopes are rather high!
The album consist of 10 tracks which are divided into three ‘themes’, as the albums title indicates; Latent, Active and Descent. The first four tracks under the Latent theme are very dark soundscapes with occasional rhythmic elements. The sound is relatively abstract and surreal. The second track, ‘Unceasing’, sounds very eerie with sounds of crying women. The Active theme consists of three tracks which have a more tribal atmosphere, like ‘Post Antrim’, and here and there some ritual sounds. The last theme is Descent, which should let us descent in the last remaining of sounds. This also consists of three song, which starts with a dark drone track, ‘No Body No Murder’, through some tribal/ritual realm with ‘The Eternal Day Is Done’, and ending in a dark industrial soundscape with ‘To Autumn’.
Zilverhill deliver again a very good, dark and surreal album. The strength of Zilverhill is in creating original and abstract soundscapes, dealing with whatever suits your mind. Its very open-minded approach in sound and themes is very pleasant, so each listen can be a totally different experience. A must for the experimental music fan!
Zilverhill aka "Schuster and present day buna" legen mit "Latent - Active - Descent" ihre zweite Veröffentlichung vor. Die beiden Australier bewegen sich am Rande des Dark Ambient-Genres, denn ihre Musik ist nicht allzu schnell, sehr düster und vorrangig elektronisch. Doch Zilverhill mischen die typischen Klanglandschaften mit allerlei Zutaten aus dem Klanglabor. Da sind Samples, Fieldrecordings, Noise-Sprengsel und industrielle Sounds sowie rituelle Rhythmen. Das Besondere daran, ist vor allem die ungewöhnliche Kombination. Schon der zweite Titel "Unceasing" erzeugt eine extrem dunkle Atmosphäre, die beim Hörer regelrecht Beklemmung hervorruft. Dazu dürften auch die Schmerzenlaute beitragen. Bei "Sixteen Provinces" ist es ein Gerät, das ich noch aus meiner Kindheit kenne, dessen Namen mir aber entfallen ist - eine kleine Spieldose zum Drehen, die sanfte Blings von sich gibt - die dem Stück seinen besonderen Charakter verleiht. Die Reihe der Beispiele ließe sich fortsetzen, doch der Hörer sollte den Zilverhill-Klangkosmos unbedingt selbst erkunden. Für die künstlerich Interessierte sei erwähnt, dass die Australier sich als durch Lewis Carroll ["Looking Glass"] und die Bilder August Natterers ["Axle Of The World. White Rabbit", "Uncertainty Of Good Fortune"] inspiriert verorten. Alle anderen nehmen das Werk vielleicht als Ansporn, sich mit diesen Künstler zu beschäftigen.
Zilverhill erfinden das Genre nicht neu aber die sind originell und kaum vorausberechenbar. Die Australier können den Terminus experimentelle Musik ohne schlechtes Gewissen für sich in Anspruch nehmen. Dabei gelingt es ihnen trotzdem, einen organischen, fließenden Sound zu erzeugen, der nicht, wie bei so vielen verkopften Projekten nach kurzer Zeit nervt. Müsste ich unbedingt eine Schublade erfinden, so würde ich das Ganze "Organic Industrial Ambient" nennen. Wem das nicht hilft, dem sei gesagt, dass Freunde von Nueva Germania sicher auch an Zilverhill Gefallen finden werden.
Ein Wort noch zum äußeren Erschienungsbild, denn das ist im Zusammenhang mit dem Genre eher etwas ungewöhnlich. Persönlich kann ich mit den gelben "Strichcodes" nicht allzu viel anfangen, in Summe ist es aber besser, diese Optik zu bedienen als die 10.000 Variation von Mord, Krieg und Wahnsinn aufs Cover zu bringen. Hätte ich die CD allerdings in einem großen Stapel unter vielen anderen gesehen, ohne die Musik zu kennen, so wäre sie sicher liegen geblieben. So ist das nun mal mit unseren Beschränkungen - oft entgehen uns dadurch gute Dinge…
PS: In meiner Plattensammlung stehen Zilverhill zwischen Zero Kama und Zoviet France. Ein guter Platz, wie ich finde...
Drawing from sources such as Lewis Carroll, artist August Natterer and (ahem) Richard Nixon, Zilverhill is going beyond the ambient conventions of “We like to jam out to Cluster, maaan.” The notes mention their goals of recreating the “desolation of drunkenness & schizophrenia, cold, sarcasm and distant/past/fleeting recollections”. But within this high and diverse concept of the collaboration between Schuster and Present Day Buna, is not just headspace wankery. These are good tracks, lurched forward by some distorted drum programming and consistent use of creepy vocal samples.
This one is a breather, so don’t expect to put this on and want to move around much, but there’s enough here to please the whole family. If your whole family is a bunch of somnambulists who double as drone vampires for their kicks.
7/10 -- Andrew Murdock Livingston (4 August, 2009) Foxy Digitalis
This is the second release from the Australian label Adeptsound featuring English Industrial/drone/ambient-ists Zilverhill and a much improved effort on their first it is, though judging by some of the reviews I’ve read online it would seem that I was in the minority on that one. Either way this is more of a, dare I say it, cohesive affair. Eotvos [their first] seemed to me a collision of ideas and sounds that somehow, despite it all being perfectly listenable, failed to fully ignite. A random scattering of sounds as if pulled from the Industrial Ambience Sound Library and oh thats a nice one, well I never there’s a thunderclap and that must be a flock of starlings if I’m not very much mistaken.
Latent-Active-Descent meanwhile flows effortlessly though a series of ten varied droneworks incorporating all that is good in that Industrial Ambience Sound Library.
From the onset of Corner Stone and its sublime bird chatter, whispered vocals, ritualistic bones and an ominous drone to the finale of To Autumn and its head swimming machine like churn this is a journey par excellence and a fine immersive experience as ever you’d wish to subject yourself to.
The whole thing is divided into its titular parts which I find rather pointless seeing as how it works as a whole anyway but that aside this is a solid release worthy of your attention. Each track contains some memorable moments; the tortured souls of Unceasing, the resonant ethnic plucks of Sixteen Provinces, the echoey outer space-ness of Erebus, each track emerging slowly exuding a filmic quality which I find rare in a release that spans an hour. Far too often I hear material such as this where my attention wanders, the samples become predictable, the work becoming boring rather than involving, but that is evidently not the case here.
For anybody wishing to escape the everyday without the aid of something that comes in a two litre bottle or is illegal I cant recommend this enough.
Zu den bekanntesten Vertretern des elektronischen Untergrunds auf dem Kontinent Australien gehören sicherlich SPK (Graeme Revell) & Terra Sancta, die weltweit über Reputation und Wertschätzung verfügen. Hingegen das Zwei-Mann Projekt Zilverhill mit einem Teilsitz im Westen des Landes und der anderen Hälfte in Sheffield (England) scheint noch ein echter Geheimtipp zu sein, welches mit “Latent-Active-Descent” den Nachfolger zum vielfach gelobten Werk “Eötvös” (2008) präsentiert, das ebenfalls über die beiden hauseigenen Tonträgermanufakturen Adeptsound (Australien) & Blind Shouter (England) das Licht der Welt erblickt.
Hinter Zilverhill verbergen sich die Akteure Schuster (Australien), der seit 1980 bei diversen Formationen aus dem Dieter Müh Umfeld mitmischt(e) und Present Day Buna (England), welcher auch seit den 80ern Sounds kreiert.
Inhaltlich ließen sich die Protagonisten von dem deutschen Art Brut-Künstler August Natterer (1868 – 1933) & dem britischen Schriftsteller Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898) inspirieren, welche beide in engerem Sinne mit Halluzinationen “kämpften” und dadurch Art erschufen (Anm. des Redakteurs: Im Fall von August Natterer nachgewiesen, bei Lewis Carroll vermutet!). Diejenigen, die puren Wahnsinn als thematische Komponente favorisieren, sollten
Sich “Latent-Active-Descent” von Zilverhill nicht entgehen lassen!
Musikalisch erlebt die interessierte Hörergemeinde eine “engmaschige” Symbiose aus den Stilen Industrial (die rituelle Variante), (Dark) Ambient, Drone & (stringenter) Noise in drei Akten (”Latent”, “Active” und “Descent”), welche die Interpreten mit verschiedensten aber meist schreienden Sprachsamples & Percussions akzentuierten. Der experimentelle wie obskur mysteriöse Grundtenor von diesem Oeuvre, dürfte vornehmlich Rezipientinnen & Rezipienten anlocken, die sich ohne geistige Scheuklappen für elektronische Untergrundtonkunst interessieren. “Latent-Active-Descent” konzipierten Zilverhill wie eine fließende Geschichte, welche fortlaufend an Spannung und Abgedrehtheit zunimmt, wodurch die Konsumentenschaft ein sehr intensives Hörerlebnis erwartet (Aufgrund dieser Begebenheit entfällt die Benennung eines expliziten Anspieltipps!).
Passend zum restlichen Gesamteindruck, erscheint der Tonträger in einem surrealistisch bzw. dadaistisch gestaltetem Digipack, welches “Latent-Active-Descent” den passenden Rahmen verleiht, um als Gesamtkunstwerk in der Wahrnehmung zu stehen.
Fazit:
Das australisch-britische Gespann Zilverhill offeriert mit “Latent-Active-Descent” eine sehr vielschichtige Publikation, welche aus jeglicher Hinsicht überzeugt, wenn die Konsumentenschaft auf einen Crossover aus elektronischer Untergrundmusik abfährt, der einen halluzinativen Touch vermittelt. Wer “open-minded” durch den Musikdschungel schlendert und das Besondere sucht, sollte Zilverhill unbedingt antesten – meine Empfehlung!
Latent-Active-Descent is the sophomore CD release by Zilverhill, the collaborative and long-standing project of Schuster (Perth) & pRESENT dAY bUNA (Sheffield). Some rather mystifying notes accompany the release—we're told that the three-part recording is informed by the “outsider” art of August Natterer (1868–1933) (specifically Axle of the World, with Rabbit [below] and Uncertainty of Good Fortune) and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There—but making sense of such detail isn't necessary to appreciate the recording. An hour-long, picturesque travelogue of desolate and disturbed gloomscapes filled with disembodied voices, droning strings, and electronics, Latent-Active-Descent suggests that Zilverhill's twisted dark ambient might best be filed alongside the recordings of Coil and Twine.
There's a suggestion that Richard Nixon's voice plays a part in the pieces but, if so, it's never identifiable as such when the voice samples are so severely manipulated. In addition to the tracks' mangled voices, one encounters no shortage of bird chirps, tribal drumming, muffled noise drones, howling winds, and shuddering strings. “Unceasing” is like a funeral procession through a crow-infested graveyard at midnight, with the groaning spectres out in full force. The screech and clatter of trains mixed with the bluster of industrial emissions dominates “Birdtrain,” while “To Autumn” takes a six-minute plunge into an industrial crypt. Though animated by an upbeat rhythm, “The Eternal Day Is Done” still finds its choir of animal noises first darkened by whooshes and rumbles, and then obliterated by the violent screech of an electric guitar. One is reminded in particular of Twine in the tracks that incorporate radio transmissions, with one, “Sixteen Provinces,” a torrential blur of thumb piano plinks and radio conversations, and the other, “No Body No Murder,” a twilight drone overlaid by crime scene transmissions.
