Ruptured World: Exoplanetary
Cryo Chamber
UK-based Alistair Rennie (aka Ruptured World) has fashioned a powerfully evocative narrative for Exoplanetary, an eight-track dark ambient exercise that merges spoken word with atmospheric dronescapes distorted by interference and static. That Rennie's also established himself as an author of Weird Fantasy and Horror Fiction makes sense; the story-line for Exoplanetary certainly reflects a literary sensibility at work, one accustomed to building tension via plot development and the accumulation of narrative detail.
By way of a brief synopsis, the story's as follows: having reached its intended destination, the deep space mission to Proxima Centauri b begins assessing the planet as a possible site for colonial expansion and human habitation until discovering, having confronted a mutating and highly intelligent species called the Kriven, that they're not alone. It's a familiar sci-fi story-line with a long history, of course, but it's nevertheless effective, especially when it's presented with as much craft and conviction as it is here.
On this recording, Rennie's speaking voice, which sounds a little bit like Jeremy Irons, exhibits the precise enunciation of the prototypical academic, in this case a scientist named Hector Macrae. With the doctor's voice mangled by distortion, the impression created is of transmissions originating from afar, the connection in place but the signal weak. Adding to the general sense of unease, the voice element is in places distorted so severely its content verges on indecipherable.
Spoken text at the beginning of “The Bright Communion of Primal Energies” establishes a context for the narrative with a report of the missions' arrival on the planet and precautions put in place in anticipation of encounters with alien forms, after which portentous ambient material—droning tones punctuated by grainy flourishes, percussive rattlings, and cryptic themes—does much the same for the purely aural component. The tone of the recording is controlled horror; in his reportage, Macrae, in keeping with his professional role as a scientist committed to documenting the experiences of the mission, relays the information dispassionately, despite the feeling of impending doom that grows with each transmission.
At eleven minutes, “The Voyage of Tarknassus,” which involves a team member's decision to journey into the Sunken Valleys to try to persuade the Kriven from destroying the mission's remaining members, is the longest of the eight settings and also the one most collage-styled in design, alternating as it does between spoken parts, acoustic piano passages, and electronic-ambient sequences.
One of the things that makes Exoplanetary so effective is the balance achieved between the spoken element and the instrumental material, with the former often introducing a track and then withdrawing to let the ambient content take over and distill into an instrumental form the character of the text content preceding it. And for the record, Rennie's no slouch in the soundscaping department: the instrumental passages are texturally rich, skilfully executed, and evoke convincingly the locales associated with the narrative. Indicative of how important the textual dimension is to the project, Cryo Chamber has included in the CD package a documentary booklet featuring a sixteen-page summary of the mission's objectives, personnel, and details about the planet's geophysical characteristics (a digital form of the booklet accompanies the download, too).October 2018