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Kevin Drumm, "Trouble"
Drumm’s latest is quite an unusual and expectation-subverting one, given that his previous releases for the label have largely been genre-defining noise masterpieces. Trouble is definitely not that, nor does it bear much in common with any of Kevin's other major efforts.  Billed as "54-minute excursion into the netherworld of the audio spectrum," the piece is an extremely quiet and amorphous experiment in queasily dissonant harmonies that teeters dangerously close to being complete silence.
As a Kevin Drumm fan, I am deeply conflicted and exasperated by this album.  On the one hand, I am delighted that he has managed to avoid repeating himself and that he continues to push himself into new realms of experimentalism.  Whatever it is, Trouble is definitely not something that can be reasonably categorized as drone, ambient, or noise.  Nor could it be described as unambitious, as Kevin weaves a nuanced web of eerie, uneasily overlapping swells and hums for almost an hour.  Unfortunately, it all adds up to a bit of a frustrating listening experience for some very fundamental reasons.
For one, Trouble is an extremely quiet album that amounts to little more than faintly disquieting background noise unless it is played at a crazily high volume.  I realize that this was a deliberate artistic choice, but that does not make it less frustrating.  Secondly, Trouble does not feel like an actual composition.  Rather, it is just something that happens for an hour, then stops happening.  It could have just as easily gone on for ten minutes or six hours instead.  Without any kind of progression or arc, there is no real reward for attentive, prolonged listening–just a lot more of the same. It is like Kevin sonically snuck into my apartment to paint all of my white walls an extremely subtle shade of off-white that I would never notice unless I knew he had done it: plenty of effort for no discernible reason.
Of course, it is possible (and desirable) to use volume-leveling software to make Trouble a far more engaging and audible experience, but that is not the album Kevin intended: he clearly wanted to make nearly imperceptible sonic wallpaper, something aggressively contrarian, or some kind of dark successor to Cage's "4'33"".  Whatever the purpose, it certainly seems like an extremely quixotic endeavor to me.  I am completely mystified as to why this ended up as a formal Editions Mego release rather than just a self-released Bandcamp or CDR experiment.  Trouble is strictly for serious Drumm fans only, as it is only interesting because it was made by Kevin Drumm.
Samples:
- Excerpt One (volume enhanced)
- Excerpt Two (volume enhanced)
- Excerpt Three (original volume)
 
