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Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom, "The Days of Mars"
The debut full-length album from Delia and Gavin is like an extended single, comprised of four songs extended to their full potential, each stretching between 11 and 13 minutes, which is the perfect amount of time to pull anybody into 'the zone' and then drop them out before anything bad happens. The jagged, staccato sounds generated by the meticulous sequencing create nothing short of an aural strobe light, in the way that staring at it for extended periods of time can easily tamper with -all- senses of the body.
Underneath the rigid repetition, elongated notes from live synth and piano playing rounds out the sound. Reference points have been made to Eno and Philip Glass, but there's something much deeper happening. It's almost as if Giorgio Moroder decided to do a take on Coil's Time Machines—there's something more going on underneath the surface, but any ritual magick in the recipe is being well-concealed by the duo at this stage.
Those like me who fell in love with the duo via the DFA 12" of "El Monte"/"Rise" won't be disappointed as each of the four tracks take a similar route in their length and development. The album opens with the original version of "Rise," and for the first time we're able to hear the song free from the techno dance beat that the DFA imposed on the 12" release. For "13 Moons" the duo swaps the lead from the background, keeping the piano sounds and synths in the foreground while the sequencer fades in and out of the background. Once again, perceptions of time easily become distorted. "Relevée" opens with a similar subtlety, but as minutes pass, the legato becomes staccato: the live playing gets chopped into a sequenced soup and layers dance slowly with each other. Halfway through, organ sounds begin to mimic voices in an effect reminiscent of some of the Pink Floyd material from Meddle and Atom Heart Mother. "Black Spring" closes with another mesmerizing interplay of man and machine. It's so hard to tell at some of these points what is actually being played intentionally and what sounds are being created incidentally through effects, distortion or eq, or if it's the aural version of an optical illusion and my ears are having fun playing tricks on me.
This music isn't "glitch," it's not accidental at all, and as Delia and Gavin claim, it's created by layering live takes from keyboards and other instruments, some created specifically for this music. We're spoiled by the digital age of CDs, where we can plop in a disc and know how much time the whole journey is going to take. Delia and Gavin in a way sound like they're trying to distort and bend it, as the passage of time becomes fuzzy while completely bathed in the aural movement within. Days of Mars could easily be one of those albums people come to associate with some of the most memorable and enjoyable trips they've ever done.
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