Inverz: Songs
Granny Records

Recorded and mixed by Inverz (real name Savvas Metaxas, based in Thessaloniki, Greece and a founding member of Good Luck Mr Gorsky) at home during last winter, Songs' eight settings were assembled from multiple layers of electric and acoustic guitars, synthesizers, field recordings, loops, electric piano, an old tape recorder, melodica, and samples. Though they're short for the genre (most are in the five- to seven-minute range), the pieces are fundamentally ambient noise drones that Metaxas has shaped into slow-moving panoramas of immense textural depth. And though they're not conventionally pretty in character, they're not unmusical or dissonant either. The source materials are sometimes melded into teeming abstract wholes and lose their identifying character as a result: “l song” pursues a linear trajectory as it slowly swells into an immense vortex of droning layers, and “r song” opens with scattered pings of tinkles that are eventually buried under a hammering wave of noise. In other cases, the instruments remain identifiable: “k song” brings the intensity down a few notches which allows the electric guitar to be clearly heard amidst the industrial churn, “v song” opens with peaceful layers of acoustic guitar picking that are eventually engulfed by sheets of noise, and “t song” presents a seething blend of piano tinkles and what sounds like amplified seashore sounds. The fifty-four-minute collection includes two collaborations. The deep groan of the bowed contrabass underpins upper register string fragments in the album's longest and most memorable piece, “bow song,” which Metaxas constructed using several contrabass samples played by Iraklis Losifidis and which grows into a heaving, near-tribal mass of percussive accents and layered strings. The closing “q song,” a remix treatment featuring One Mile Tar, seems a rather anomalous inclusion by comparison, given the degree to which it gravitates towards conventional rhythm-based electronica. Even so, the rather cheekily-titled Songs should certainly satisfy listeners with an appetite for abstract sound sculpting.

October 2008