Cezary Gapik: The Sum Of Disappearing Sounds
Karlrecords
The Sum of Disappearing Sounds features a quartet of ambitious and long-form (between eleven and sixteen minutes) explorations of contrasting moods by Czestochowa, Poland-born Cezary Gapik. Ostensibly dark ambient in tone, his evocative sonic paintings also draw heavily upon the industrial and drone traditions. Though Gapik brings to his work influences extending back to Public Image Ltd., Throbbing Gristle, and Cabaret Voltaire, the instrumental pieces on the album obviously have more in common with the isolationist and industrial genres than post-punk. What most recommends the project, which Gapik produced using prepared instruments, field recordings, and computer-processed synthetic sounds, is that each of the four pieces presents a markedly different world and mood.
“Uncertainty” scatters fields of fluttering micro-organisms over a dense base of lustrous washes and drones in such a way that an overall sense of calm reigns. Far more unsettling by comparison is “The Gradual Loss of Elasticity,” which unfolds at the pitch of a mid-level, industrial-machine roar and generally suggests the activity of a writhing, combustible swarm of screeching noise and buzz-saw drones. A dozen minutes of grainy machine convulsions, “Idiomat” evokes either amplified geological data recordings taken from the earth's innermost core or alien transmissions captured by NASA and amplified for analysis. At album's end, “Still, No Beginning, and …Without End” plunges headlong into a blurry cauldron of viral sound for fifteen suffocating minutes until one feels incapable of extricating oneself from the black hole's deathly pull. Gapik's vision is dramatic and disturbing, and well-served by this disquieting collection.March 2012